
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Cliap.U^ Copyright No.a4:a' 
Shelf-a-A-i^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



w^' 



IDEAS FROM NATURE 



TALKS WITH STUDENTS 



BY 



/ 
WILLIAM ELDER, A. M., Sc. D, 

Professor of Chemistry, Colhy University 



PHILADELPHIA 

American Baptist Publication ^ociet3^\Ct OF 
1420 Chestnut Street 




2nd COPYiVOCOP; 



£5 



5549 



Copyright 1898 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



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jfrom tbe Socictis's own iprcss 



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tBIsnr^ '^' 'Robins, T). T>, 



I. DESIGN 7 

II. OBJECTIONS 47 

III. ENERGg 87 

IV. NATURAL LAW AND MIRACLE ... 127 
Y. NATURE A MANIFESTATION OF GOD 165 



I 

DESIGN 



The world, 

The beauty and the wonder and the power, 

. . . and God nnade it all ! 

— Browning 

He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? 
He that formed the eye, shall he not see? 



Physical science affirms that the sen- 
sible universe is made up of matter and 
energy alone. The saying is unquestion- 
ably true of the sensible universe ; eye 
and ear and the other bodily avenues 
through which knowledge flows in upon 
us, confirm the existence of these alone — 
matter, the material of which all bodies 
consist ; energy, the mysterious cause of 
changes in matter, called the phenomena 
of nature. 

But physical science does not affirm 

that the universe contains nothing beyond 

these. It studies that which ^, 

•.i_ .1. IDiscovering 
appears m nature with the 

senses as its instruments, ^ 
and reports truthfully the grand results of 
its search ; but it gives no reason for con- 
cluding that other realities may not exist 
beyond its proper field of investigation. 
In fact, there is implied in this use of the 

9 



Ideas from ]N[atupe 



senses the existence of another reality, a 
something behind the senses which em- 
ploys and directs them ; a thinking power 
within us without which there could be no 
knowledge of matter or energy or aught 
else, the self-conscious mind which not 
only receives impressions through the 
senses, but actively seeks knowledge by 
their use, which observes, reflects, classi- 
fies, reasons. Clearly it is possible that 
the mind, on which such high qualities 
have been bestowed, may be able to find 
in nature evidences of things other than 
the phenomena produced by the ceaseless 
action of energy on matter. 

To assure ourselves that very different 
kinds of knowledge may be gained from 
the same source, let us seek the aid of a 
homely illustration. When we read from 
the printed page, the eye makes known to 
us only two existences, the white paper 
and the familiar black marks upon it. As 
a matter of fact, however, we are scarcely 
conscious of these. That something be- 
hind the eye, using the eye merely as an 
instrument, finds in those familiar black 

lO 



Design 



marks signs that have a meaning entirely 
beyond themselves. As we connect these 
intelligently, by a power quite other than 
that of the senses, we find ourselves in 
possession of something radically different 
from any quality of the paper or the ink 
which were employed to convey it, some- 
thing as real as either of them, but having 
an altogether different form of existence; 
we have an idea. 

And yet we might profitably study either 
the paper or the type, those realities sensi- 
ble to hand or eye. A record of the discov- 
eries and inventions which have resulted 
in furnishing a cheap material suitable for 
receiving the written or printed letter, 
would reveal many things closely connected 
with human progress. Still more curious 
and valuable knowledge would be gained 
if we set ourselves to study the printed 
characters, their forms, history, meaning, 
tracing them back to their rude genesis, 
back through writing, hieroglyph, cunei- 
form, to the man, Accad be he, or Sumir- 
ian, who in a moment of inspiration first 

used marks to represent thought. 

II 



Ideas from plature 



Fascinating as such research would be, 
we rate the value of its results low when 
compared with that of the ideas which the 
characters on the paper convey to our 
minds. Think how precious these may be ; a 
'^ Novum Organumy' a ^^ Principia,^^ the long 
record of scientific discoveries from Aris- 
totle to our own time — filling the universe 
with light, guiding the progress of the 
world — a poem by Homer or Shakespeare, 
a philosophy by Plato or Bacon, or more 
worthy than all these the clear, imperative 
call to duty by inspired prophet or Teacher 
qualified to tell us, what most of all we 
need to know, how to live well this life 
which we can live but once. 

Such things, timers most precious lega- 
cies, come to us through the humble in- 
strumentality of the printed page — little 
daubs of printer's ink on a cheap white paper. 
In like manner, as we study the properties 
of matter and the manifestations of energy 
or force, we find ourselves gaining ideas 
whose reality we can no more doubt than 
we can question the existence of earth and 
sun, light and heat. It may be that among 

12 



Design 



the ideas taught through the materials and 
operations of nature there are truths of 
still greater value than knowledge of the 
grandeur of the universe, even truths that 
can aid us in the formation of belief, in the 
building of character, in the conduct of 
life. If so, we want them. 

Material things are present and near. 
By their presence they may shut out from 
consideration other things at least as worthy 
as they, while their nearness may so exag- 
gerate them as to pervert our estimate of 
the varied concerns of life, which must be 
taken as a whole and in true perspective to 
afford us a just estimate of their relative 
values. More than this, it may be the 
higher function of these material and visi- 
ble things that surround us daily to teach 
lessons of realities beyond the reach of 
sense. 

It will be a great gain for us if what we 
have learned of the things that are seen 
can be made to witness to us of things un- 
seen, of truths perhaps as much beyond the 
facts of science as the meaning of the 
golden rule outvalues what may be known 

13 



Ideas fpom ]N[atiire 



of the curious marks that represent the 
words conveying the meaning of that pre- 
cept to us. 

With this end in view, let us take up 
some of the most famihar topics of the 
classroom and inspect them once more. 

When we have witnessed an experiment 
in chemistry and learned what we may of 
.. the changes produced in the 
. substances used by the forces 

^ that acted upon them, we 

are certain that the same experiment, 
that is, one made with the same materials, 
in the same way, and under the same con- 
ditions, will always yield exactly the same 
results. We find that alkalies and acids 
have always their appropriate action ; and 
so strong is our conviction of this regular- 
ity that any apparent deviation from it is 
set down to our own error. Here then, 
we find in nature something besides the 
matter and energy with which physical 
science deals, an idea which matter and 
force are the means of conveying to us, an 
idea so evident that its validity cannot be 
questioned. 

14 



Design 



The idea is that of order in nature, and 
so universally is this recognized that it is 
embodied in one of our most familiar terms, 
the "laws of nature," by which we mean 
the observed regularity of natural phe- 
nomena and express our confidence in the 
continuance of that regularity. It is the 
boast of modern science that it has caused 
the acceptance of this idea,^ that it has pro- 
duced everywhere the belief that nature is 
governed according to laws that are uniform 
in their operation. Our conviction of the 
truth of this belief is so strong that it can- 
not be overcome. Although, from its 
very nature, it is incapable of demonstra- 
tion, we submit ourselves to its guidance 
in every concern of life.^ No sane man 
would expect other than a fatal result if he 

^ It must admitted that this thought was famihar to 
the writers of the Bible long before the birth of the 
modern sciences. 

2 The moral significance of this reliableness of nature 
is thus expressed by the author of the ** Unseen Uni- 
verse" : '* We have perfect trust that God, whom we 
believe to have given us intelligence, will work in such 
a way as not to put us to permanent intellectual con- 
fusion" (p. 91). 

15 



Ideas from plature 



were to set at naught the law of gravitation 
by stepping off the edge of a lofty tower, 
or disregard the laws of health by drink- 
ing a deadly poison. Clearly there is an 
established order in nature, banishing from 
it all possibility of chance or accident. 

Now we know that laws do not cause 
anything, do not govern anything. The 
expression ^'governed by law'' is inexact 
and erroneous in all cases, and when applied 
to nature may give rise to hurtful error. 
The law is a mere statement, powerless in 
itself, of the manner in which the power 
behind the law governs. The laws of 
nature reveal the existence of a power be- 
hind nature, whose methods they are, a 
power capable of establishing and main- 
taining those laws, and the harmonious 
working of the laws proclaims the unity of 
their Author. 

But we must notice that this order of 
nature is not at all of a mechanical kind. 
Men sometimes talk of natural laws as 
though they were real existences in them- 
selves, fulfilling themselves with machine- 
like regularity and the resistless certainty 



i6 



Design 

of blind fate. Science does not warrant 
such a view. We have learned that every 
event must be ascribed to an adequate 
cause, that similar causes produce similar 
effects, that the succession of cause and 
effect proceeds in unbroken continuity. 

But the study of nature utters a warn- 
ing here. We may apply the idea of con- 
tinuity blindly ; we may extend it too far 
and be led into serious error ; even the law 
may be used unlawfully. To illustrate : 
We take a bar of metal and place it over a 
source of heat. Its temperature rises, 
faster or slower according to the amount 
of heat received, and we talk of cause and 
effect; the volume of the solid increases 
also, and this we note to be in proportion 
to the rise of temperature. So we may 
formulate a rule and fairly determine what 
volume a given mass of this metal will 
have at different temperatures. But our 
rule is only applicable within narrow limits, 
for if we continue our experiment we 
reach a point where a new thing hap- 
pens, quite at variance with preceding re- 
sults. Added heat no longer causes rise 
B 17 



Ideas fpom ]^atiire 



of temperature in the mass of metal, but 
it begins to flow down as a liquid and has 
assumed a new state of existence subject 
to new conditions before increased heat 
again begins to raise its temperature. 

Every student of nature knows that he 
is constantly meeting with the unexpected, 
with interruptions of continuity, as he ad- 
vances in his knowledge of its operations. 
Water, taken at a certain temperature, ex- 
pands whether it is heated or cooled. Va- 
riations of temperature alone will cause it 
to exist as a solid, a liquid, or a vapor. 
The most minute acquaintance with its 
properties in the solid state affords no in- 
dication of its qualities as a liquid ; and 
when it assumes the state of vapor we 
must begin its study anew. Acted on by 
heat or electricity, water is suddenly 
changed into the two elementary gases, 
oxygen and hydrogen, each possessing 
strongly marked characteristics, but neither 
giving any hint of the properties of the 
familiar liquid formed by their chemical 
union. We do not interpret the unex- 
pected events as caprice or violation of 

i8 



Design 

law, for we cannot doubt that the same 
thing will happen again under the same 
conditions. The truth is that we are only 
beginning to catch a glimpse of the real 
grandeur of creation, even of that part of it 
open to human investigation. Our scientific 
knowledge, though so extensive and valu- 
able in the aggregate, is small when com- 
pared to the unknown which still eludes 
us. Our philosophic understanding of 
nature is yet in its infancy. So Newton 
said long ago ; so Lord Kelvin repeats to- 
day. 

All this points to the conclusion that 
nature is manifold beyond our most exalted 
anticipations. What we have experienced 
of its operations is sufficient to give us 
confidence in its orderly government, to 
convince us of the truth of the great doc- 
trine of continuity ; but it is also suffi- 
cient to warn us that this doctrine must 
be applied with caution and humility. 
The power working in nature is evidently 
not of the order of blind force, to be in- 
terpreted by rules of mechanic regularity, 
but of the higher order of will and intel- 

19 



Ideas from plature 



ligence. This order of the world, which 
no one dares question in act even if he 
would in thought, finds its only rational 
explanation in a Divine Ordainer. 

We do not proceed far in the study of 

nature before we meet with another idea, 

that of skillful contrivance. 

^ We recognize it in the prop- 

erties with which substances have been 
endowed, as in the properties of oxygen, so 
resistless when its chemical activities are 
aroused, so gentle at ordinary temperatures, 
reducing a whole city to ashes, yet bath- 
ing the most delicate tissues harmlessly ; 
in the properties of carbon, so well fitted 
to serve as fuel, yet inert and harmless 
under ordinary conditions. 

This fact that consummate skill is shown 
in the structure of the commonest sub- 
stances which we use daily is most forcibly 
impressed upon us when we strive to form 
some conception of what that structure is, 
and to find out how the properties of each 
substance are related to its inner constitu- 
tion. As yet we have no hint of what 

that relation may be. 

20 



Design 

Caustic soda and hydrochloric acid are 
bodies possessing well-known properties, 
caustic, corrosive, poisonous. Yet when 
solutions of these are mixed in due propor- 
tion all these properties are lost, the sub- 
stances themselves disappear, and in their 
places are found water and common salt, 
not acid nor poisonous, but necessary for 
foods. Interpreted by the most daring 
inferences of chemical theory the acid and 
alkali are both comparatively simple in 
composition, and the change which goes 
on when these were converted into salt 
and water was the mere exchange of cer- 
tain elements. 

We may perhaps form some satisfactory 
conception of the manner in which this 
change was produced; but when we ask 
the reason for the surprising change of 
properties which resulted from the simple 
transference of material parts we find our- 
selves in the presence of a mystery, and 
are obliged to be content with a simple 
statement of final results. Let us not 
allow a certain vulgar familiarity with the 
names of things and the outside of things 

21 



Ideas from ]N[atiure 



to rob us of the valuable lesson which 
this mystery has to teach us. That lesson 
is reverence for the surpassing skill ex- 
hibited in the inner structure of material 
things which we call common and ordinary. 
Intimate acquaintance with nature does 
not tend to lessen admiration ; on the con- 
trary, reverence grows as knowledge grows. 
When an explanation is found for some- 
thing before unknown, it brings with it a 
revelation of more mystery beyond, and 
all explanations point forward to one ulti- 
mate mystery which is the source of being. 
The evidence of contrivance in nature 
is more clear in the mutual adaptations of 
two or more agencies so that 
Adaptation ^j^^y ^^^^ together to pro- 

duce one result. This idea of adaptation 
is in advance of that of contrivance, how- 
ever intricate. The human mind finds 
much to stimulate its growth in a study of 
the powers and properties of individual sub- 
stances and in the modes of operation of 
various forms of energy. But in the pres- 
ence of these we are driven to ask, " What 
end do they serve .? '' When the mutual 

22 



Design 

relations of things are discovered the sig- 
nificance of individual functions is appre- 
ciated, and we the better understand to 
what extent skill is shown in their con- 
trivance. 

Thus it is only necesssary to heat car- 
bon and oxygen together to cause them to 
combine with great vigor, evolving a gener- 
ous supply of heat. Think of the carbon, 
the product of long past ages, stored up 
in the earth in the form of mineral coal, 
and of the oxygen free in the atmosphere. 
In them man has furnished to his hand a 
mine of energy which he may call forth at 
his will to minister to the comfort of every- 
day life, or to speed the work of the world. 
Think how every growing plant that lifts 
its leaves to the sun is winning back this 
expended energy for our service once more, 
and it seems ungrateful to begrudge the 
name Providence to such consummately 
skillful and beneficent contrivance as this. 

Again, adaptation is most distinctly 
shown in the properties with which certain 
substances have been endowed to an emi- 
nent degree, fitting them to fill a place of 

23 



Ideas from JNlature 



first importance in the economy of nature. 
Water is a good instance of this, on account 
of its wide distribution and varied uses, 
and our comparative familiarity with it. It 
is also an illustration of the capital fact 
that it is in the case of the substances of 
which we know most that this evidence is 
strongest. 

In the study of water there is much to 
challenge attention and excite admiration. 
We are familiar with it as a liquid, but at a 
temperature not very low it becomes a solid, 
and at all temperatures of the earth it 
escapes into the air as an invisible gas or 
vapor. The solid snow and ice wrap the 
earth as in a warm mantle to protect it 
during the rigors of winter ; but the vapor 
of water in the air has a yet more impor- 
tant office. Water is supplied in unstinted 
amount, in ocean, seas, lakes, rivers, yet 
considering its varied uses in nature, we 
are forced to conclude that there is not a 
drop too much ; about three-fourths of the 
earth's surface is covered with water that 
the remainder may be fitted to become the 

dwelling-place of man. 

24 



Desigri 



Consider the work of water as a regulator 
and distributer of heat. It is fitted for 
this office because it possesses certain prop- 
erties in an exceptionally high degree, con- 
stituting it the climate-maker of the world. 

In the first place, water can absorb more 

heat than any other known substance, solid 

or liquid. By this means it ^^^ ^^.^^^^_ 

cools the air of summer, and ,^ ^ 

Mate]? of the 
as cold weather comes on "* . 

gives out the heat it had 
absorbed, to moderate the severity of 
winter. An island in the ocean has, as 
every one knows, an equable climate for 
this reason ; what we may call the waste 
heat of summer is stored away and held 
over for winter. A French scientist 
lately made an estimate of the amount of 
heat absorbed by the lake of Geneva dur- 
ing summer and given out as it cools at 
the approach of winter ; it is as much as 
would be produced by the burning of three 
hundred million tons of coal. How much 
then, must the ocean take up and give out 
during similar changes, and how beneficent 
must be its effect on climate ! 

25 



Ideas from jiatupe 



But no matter how great a capacity for 
heat water may possess, it must at last be- 
come chilled by long-continued cold. Then 
at a temperature not very low, just stim- 
ulating to healthy life, it solidifies, or as we 
say, freezes. Here a most curious thing 
happens. Each cubic foot of water in 
freezing gives out enough heat to raise the 
temperature of an equal amount of water, 
or more than three thousand cubic feet of 
air, seventy-nine degrees. This is in ac- 
cordance with a general law that a substance 
in solidifying gives out heat, but in the 
case of water the amount thus given out 
is exceptionally great. So long as water 
is freezing, this evolution of heat continues, 
the temperature of the air is moderated, 
and, what is even of greater moment, the 
rapidity of the change to excessive cold is 
greatly checked. When spring comes, the 
ice and snow in melting must take back all 
the heat they had given out ; melting goes 
on slowly ; and the danger of flood is les- 
sened. 

It may be said that these processes 

affect only extreme northern and southern 

26 



Design 



countries, and can have but remote influ- 
ence on the excessive heat of the tropics ; 
but for moderating this heat a still more 
liberal provision has been made. Water 
evaporates readily, more and more rapidly 
as its temperature rises, so that from tropi- 
cal waters a constant stream of invisible 
water vapor is poured into the air from 
every square foot of surface. When a 
pound of water thus changes into vapor, it 
absorbs an immense amount of heat ; ac- 
cording to an estimate made by Tyndall, 
enough to raise five pounds of iron to the 
melting point. All this disappears as heat ; 
and by close thinking we may form some 
idea of the prodigious drain thus kept up on 
the heat of the tropics, which form as it 
were the furnace of the globe. All this 
heat is again restored to the atmosphere 
when the water vapor condenses. The 
winds carry a great part of it to colder lati- 
tudes, where it is gradually condensed and 
falls as rain, giving up at the same time 
its store of heat. This heat not only warms 
the atmosphere, but checks condensation 

and prevents the deluging torrents that 

27 



Ideas from plature 



would fall if all the moisture of the air were 
to be precipitated at once. ^ 

These are not the only provisions made 
for reducing extremes of temperature and 
lessening the rapidity of change from hot 
to cold, and from cold to hot. Sea water 
is always heavier when cold than when 
warm, because it contracts down to its 
freezing point. The cold water of the 
polar region sinks to the bottom and creeps 
slowly to tropics, where it rises, becomes 
heated, and then flows off in surface cur- 
rents toward colder regions, laden with 
heat which it gives out on its way. The 
dullest mind can scarcely contemplate 
such consummate skill in contrivance as all 
this exhibits without being stirred to ad- 
miration. Does it not warrant something 
beyond admiration ? 

Let us imagine that a native of a warm 
climate, who has never felt the need of ar- 
tificial heat in a dwelling, is suddenly trans- 

1 If one mile of air saturated with water at 35° be 
cooled to 0° it will deposit one hundred and forty- 
thousand tons of water. — Roscoe^ ^''Treatise on Chemis- 
try ;' Vol, L,p, S4i^ 

28 



Desigri 

ferred to one of our northern cities in 
winter. He is shown through a great 
building warmed by a steam-heating ap- 
paratus in perfect order. How he will 
wonder at the contrast between the arctic 
temperature outside and the genial summer 
within. If he is an intelligent man how 
he will delight to inspect the great furnaces 
and boilers, the pipes and automatic con- 
trivances by which the desired temperature 
is maintained in every room. The more 
he becomes bewildered with the intricacy 
of the apparatus the more he will admire 
the skill of its maker. He would but 
lightly esteem the poor wit of the facetious 
agnostic who should tell him that he 
'^doesn't know that it has any maker." 

The heating apparatus of our globe is 
infinitely more wonderful than this ; it 
serves many more uses than this. By its 
automatic contrivances, which never get 
out of order, heat and cold are made to 
check the severity of their own changes. 
Does it not seem in the highest degree 
probable, to use no stronger term, that it 

too had a maker, and that it has something 

29 



Ideas from J^atjure 



to teach us about him ? Does not the 
practical reason, the most reliable judge 
within us, unperverted by quibbles, un- 
blinded by manufactured doubts, affirm 
unhesitatingly that it must have had an 
Almighty Maker ? 

In all things whose origin we can trace, 
skillful contrivance, contrivance that profits, 
is at once accepted as proof 
^^ of intelligent design. Es- 
pecially does it become impossible to ac- 
cept mere coincidence as an explanation of 
the observed relations when the contriv- 
ance is intricate and the adaptations many. 
In nature we find contrivance everywhere 
skillful beyond human device ; life depends 
on such nice adaptations and contrivances 
innumerable. No valid objection can be 
urged against continuing here the sure 
process of reason, here where most we 
need its guidance. Third among the ideas 
gained from a careful study of nature we 
place intelligent design, and, of necessity, 
an intelligent Designer. 

It will be worth while to take one of the 
almost innumerable uses of water and try 

30 



Desigri 

not merely to give it a correct general 
statement, but to bring it actually before 
the mind. 

Rain is absolutely necessary to the life 
of the globe. If it is withheld, industries 
languish and die, the fertile field is grad- 
ually transformed into a desert. Rain 
nourishes plant and animal ; rain supplies 
the springs that overflow to form streams 
and rivers. For it water must be purified 
and brought from the ocean. 

A brook has dried up because its source 
has been tampered with and no rain has 
fallen. Let us suppose that a company of 
men have undertaken to furnish to it the 
needed water supply during the dry season. 
Along the shore to right and left stretch 
the great distilleries necessary to change 
the salt water into fresh. From every 
point available trains are running night 
and day, carrying the purified water up to 
be poured out on the hills from which the 
brook formerly gathered its waters. What 
would be the grand result of all this ex- 
penditure of millions, this flaming of fur- 
naces and puffings of engines, this hurry 

31 



Ideas from plature 



and worry and toil of men ? An eager 
shareholder in this promising enterprise, 
standing by the shore where once a gen- 
erous stream shot out into the sea, might 
perhaps discover a tiny driblet of water 
down among the gravel under the dry 
stones. This would be the most that man 
could accomplish ; a humiliating result for 
man, who does such great and wonderful 
things that he sometimes doubts whether 
there really exists any need for other god 
than himself, or whether the power behind 
nature has ever risen to conscious intelli- 
gence higher than the human mind. 

Now imagine one of the laborers who 
had been actively employed in this most 
stupendous experiment, namely, ^* running 
a brook," sitting down to rest himself be- 
side the Mississippi River. He would have 
before him a stream that gathers its waters 
from about a million and a quarter of square 
miles, and sweeps past him over sixty mil- 
lion cubic feet of water every minute. He 
could scarcely fail to ask himself, in the 
light of his late laborious experiences, 
** How is all that water supplied ? '' 

32 



Design 



The answer is very simple ; water is 
readily changed into vapor, and this vapor 
is readily condensed to water again. The 
ordinary variations of the earth's temper- 
ature are quite sufficient to produce these 
changes, and we have noticed their benefi- 
cent effect upon climate. But the heat 
taken away from hot countries is not 
merely transferred to colder parts. 

While this is being done an even greater 
good is accomplished in the distribution of 
moisture. Silently and rapidly entering 
the water the sun's rays transform it from 
a liquid over seven hundred times heavier 
than air into a vapor much lighter than 
air, so that it rises and floats, and is carried 
on the wings of the wind to colder re- 
gions. This vapor cooled becomes liquid 
again in cloud and rain, to be poured out 
on the surface of the earth, but especially 
on hills and elevated regions. So are fed, 
not only the Father of Waters and its 
mighty rivals, but every brook that throbs 
like a pulse of life among the hills, brings 
freshness to the fields, and sweeps away 
impurities to the salt sea. It is difficult 
c 33 



Ideas fpom platiiipe 



to understand how any man can get a real 
conception of these things and not feel 
compelled to admit that there must be 
somewhere in the universe, not only power 
greater than his, but benevolent intelli- 
gence higher than his, an intelligence that 
wills, purposes, performs. These are at- 
tributes of personality. 

Not only does water possess in an emi- 
nent degree certain properties which other 
substances exhibit in less degree, but in 
one marked case it is an exception to a 
general law of nature. Through four de- 
grees above its freezing point it expands 
as it cools, instead of contracting as other 
liquids do. The importance and signifi- 
cance of this exception is dwelt on by our 
best writers on physical science, even in 
works intended to be used merely as text- 
books. 

Professor Cooke, of Harvard, calls it "a 

special adaptation in the plan of nature.''^ 

^ , Sir Henry Roscoe, in his 

^ ^ great work on chemistry, 

says : '' Although the amount of contrac- 

^ ** Chemical Physics," p. 520. 
34 



IDesigii 

tion on heating water from o"^ to 4° is but 
small, yet it exerts a most important influ- 
ence upon the economy of nature. If it 
were not for this apparently unimportant 
property, our climate would be perfectly 
Arctic, and Europe would in all probability 
be as uninhabitable as Melville Island. . . 
This cooling (of water exposed to a freez- 
ing atmosphere) goes on till the tempera- 
ture of the top layer of water sinks to 0°, 
after which a crust of ice is formed ; and 
if the mass of water be sufficiently large, 
the temperature of the water at the bot- 
tom is never reduced below 4°. In nature, 
precisely the same phenomenon occurs in 
the freezing of lakes and rivers ; the sur- 
face water is gradually cooled by cold 
winds, and thus becoming heavier, sinks, 
whilst lighter and warmer water rises to 
supply its place. This goes on till the 
temperature of the whole mass is reduced 
to 4^, after which the surface water never 
sinks, however much it may be cooled, as 
it is always lighter than the deeper water 
at 4°. Hence ice is formed only at the 
top, the mass of water retaining the tem- 

35 



Ideas from plature 



perature of 4°. Had water become heav- 
ier as it cooled down to the freezing point 
. . . our lakes and rivers would be con- 
verted into solid masses of ice, which the 
summer's warmth would be quite insuf- 
ficient thoroughly to melt ; and hence the 
climate of our now temperate zone might 
approach in severity that of the Arctic 
regions ! ^'^ 

The fact that sea water follows the gen- 
eral law, contracting as it approaches its 
freezing point, which is below 0°, very 
strongly emphasizes the significance of the 
exception in the case of fresh water. 

Thus physical science supplies us with 
evidences of design in nature, which 
strengthen as our knowledge of nature 
becomes wider and deeper. Biological 
science also furnishes evidence of a pecu- 
liarly forcible kind and pointing to the 
same conclusion. Wise and benevolent 
design implies the existence of a wise and 
benevolent Designer. This argument from 
design is an old one ; we find it in the 

^** Treatise on Chemistry," Vol. I., pp. 224, 225. 
Repeated in new ed., p. 271. 

36 



Desigri 



writings of the Hebrew prophet, in the 
^^Memorabilia ' of the Greek sage. It is 
stated with great ability in the '"• Natural 
Theology" of Paley and in the ''Bridge- 
water Treatises/' 

Our knowledge of nature has greatly 
increased since Paley's time, but this in- 
crease has only changed the form of the 
design argument, not lessened its force nor 
modified its essence. This, though hastily 
questioned by some, has been fully granted 
by leading men of science. The human 
eye or ear is still a marvel of design, no 
matter how long it was in fashioning, or 
what means were used to bring it to its 
present form. The skillful adaptation of 
means to an end is the very feature by 
which we recognize intelligent design. If 
the means employed turn out to be more 
wonderful than anything man could con- 
ceive, the lesson of purpose is not thereby 
discredited, but approved and extended. 

Let us hear w^hat some of the foremost 
scholars of our own day, standing in the 
van of science and taking an active part in 
the battle of belief, say of the validity of 

37 



Ideas from JNlature 



this argument. I select two, the first re- 
ferring to the evidences furnished by 
physical science ; the second, to those from 
biology. 

Professor Cooke, of Harvard, when dis- 
cussing these same properties of matter to 
which we have just referred, says: **I can- 
not conceive of stronger evidence of de- 
sign than this; and if these facts do not 
prove the existence of an intelligent Crea- 
tor, then all nature is a deception and our 
own faculties a lie." ^ 

Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kel- 
vin), in an inaugural address before the 
British Association, says : '' I feel pro- 
foundly convinced that the argument of 
design has been greatly too much lost sight 
of in our recent zoological speculations. 
Reaction against the frivolities of teleology, 
such as are to be found, not rarely, in the 
notes of the learned commentators on Pa- 
ley's * Natural Theology,' has, I believe, 
had a temporary effect in turning attention 
from the solid and irrefragable argument 
so well put forward in that excellent old 

^ '* Religion and Chemistry, " p. 155. 

38 



book. But overwhelmingly strong proofs 
of intelligent and benevolent design lie all 
around us, and if ever perplexities, whether 
metaphysical or scientific, turn us away 
from these for a time, they come back upon 
us with irresistible force, teaching us that 
all living beings depend on one ever-acting 
Creator and Ruler." 

This is clear and outspoken. It was 
addressed to the most august body of sci- 
entists in the realm, men familiar with all 
the objections that have been urged against 
the old argument. 

It is often instructive to observe how 
men of genius, of very different training 
and endowment, regard the same great 
question. Even John Stuart Mill, edu- 
cated as nearly as possible in a religious 
vacuum, felt constrained to say : '* It must 
be allowed that in the present state of our 
knowledge the adaptations in nature afford 
a large balance of probability in favor of 
creation by intelligence." ^ 

Prof. Huxley with equal frankness ac- 
knowledges the cogency of the argument 

1 ** Essay on Religion." 
39 



Ideas from platiure 



from design. He says : '^ The teleological 
and the mechanical views of nature are not 
necessarily mutually exclusive. On the 
contrary, the more purely a mechanist the 
speculator is, the more firmly does he as- 
sume a primordial molecular arrangement 
of which all the phenomena of the universe 
are the consequences, and the more com- 
pletely is he thereby at the mercy of the 
teleologist, who can always defy him to 
disprove that this primordial molecular ar- 
rangement was intended to evolve the phe- 
nomena of the universe.'' ^ 

Dr. Martineau makes a place for the 
argument from design in his philosophic 
^' Study of Religion,'' with the following 
comment : ^* Advanced thought, also, like 
dress and manners, is not without its fash- 
ions and its fops ; and many a scientific 
sciolist, who would bear himself comme il 
faut toward such questionable deceivers as 
^ Final Causes,' now thinks it necessary 
to have his fling at Paley and the ^ Bridge- 
water Treatises.' He has it on best au- 
thority that Darwin has exposed their 

1 **Life of Darwin," Vol. I., p. 555. 
40 



Desigii 



imposture, and he must show that he is 
not going to fall into their trap. It is 
probable that, of those who speak in this 
tone, nine out of ten have never read the 
books with which they deal so flippantly ; 
and it is certain that the tenth is incompe- 
tent to grasp the essentials of an argument, 
while letting its separable accidents fall 
away. . . I see no reason to doubt that 
Paley would have welcomed the new theory 
of organic life upon the globe, as a mag- 
nificent expansion of his idea." 

Before we leave this subject, the argu> 
ment from design for the existence of a 
Creator, let us look at it in another light. 

In order to understand to any adequate 
degree the perfection of adaptation, we 
must study, as thoroughly as we may, a 
single case. So instead of seeking for 
new materials I have drawn illustrations 
from the things most familiar. Others are 
at hand and biology furnishes many more. 
The life history of the plant, the fertiliza- 
tion of the flower, the habits of insects, 
the adaptation of the organs of animals to 
the requirements of life on land, in air 

41 



Ideas from JNlature 



and sea, the minute correspondence of 
organ and function to environment, all sug- 
gest as the most reasonable explanation of 
nature the intentional action of an intel- 
ligent being. It is difficult indeed for the 
unbiased mind to consider these things and 
not conclude that they are as they are 
because some one has made them so, and 
because he intended them so to be. 

But to realize how certainly this adapta- 
tion can only be the result of intelligent 
design, it is well to set in array before our 
eyes the great number and variety of parts 
and the many ways in which their indi- 
vidual functions, seemingly separate, are 
made to work together harmoniously to the 
accomplishment of a single end. 

Consider for a moment what is implied in 
normal human life, our ordinary daily life. 

Life as we have it is possible only in a 

very narrow area of the solar system as 

known to us. We are taught 

that a few miles beneath us 
for Life 

the heat is sufficient to melt 

iron ; not far above our heads is a cold 

sufficient to freeze mercury. Human life 

42 



Design 

and the things necessary for its mainte- 
nance have been gathered together in this 
very small section of the known universe. 

We think of the orderly succession of 
periods of light and darkness, of the 
changing sky and varying seasons, all 
adapted to the physical and mental endow- 
ments of man, of atmosphere and soil, 
plant and animal, and we are sent back for 
causes to all that astronomy has taught of 
the delicate adjustment of suns and sys- 
tems, so that seedtime and harvest, and 
cold and heat, and summer and winter, 
and day and night should not cease ; to 
all that geology has made known of the 
progressive changes through which the 
world has been brought to its present con- 
dition. 

We think of the body and its environ- 
ment, of the eye delicately adjusted for 
light, of light bringing its message from 
near or far in such form that the eye, and 
the eye alone, can interpret it, of the ear 
formed so fairily for sounds and harmonies 
made for it. 

We think of the parts of the body, of 
43 



Ideas from platiipe 



their separate functions, their mutual rela- 
tions, of the streaming currents of the 
blood, of bone and muscle and tendon, of 
nerve and brain, each a unit in its individual 
structure, each a part contributing to give 
the whole completeness. 

We may not stop here. We see that 
the body as a whole is not made for itself 
as an end, but is fitted to be the instru- 
ment of mind. 

We think of that mind holding the mys- 
tery of our own personality, holding the 
potencies that determine the issues of time 
and eternity, self-conscious, curious to in- 
quire into the meaning of things, impelled 
to look beyond the seen and find the cause 
of things, eager to grasp reality, yet in 
tutelage now amid these earthly phe- 
nomena. 

We think of our advanced social condi- 
tion worked out by man truly, but only 
possible because of ordinances established 
in the constitution of existence, with which 
man had no more to do than with the 
origin of gravitation. 

Yet all these have been brought together 
44 



Design 

and co-ordinated in that thin belt of space 
which surrounds our planet. If this co- 
ordination is an accident, the result of for- 
tuitous causes, then that accident is the 
most astounding miracle of chance man 
was ever called upon to believe. Such 
harmony culminating in intelligence can- 
not be the result of blind force. 

If any one, in view of such considera- 
tions as these, is haunted by the so-called 
difficulties of belief in a Creator, I would 
ask him if he has ever seriously considered 
how much more formidable are the diffi- 
culties of unbelief. 

In brief then the argument from design 
is this : The study of nature shows us, in 
the interaction of its materials and forces, 
in the life of plant and animal and man, 
contrivances so numerous, so elaborate, so 
refined in detail, yet all working toward a 
common end, that reason is compelled to 
the conclusion that the world is the work 
of an intelligent Creator. If we reject this 
explanation we have no other, because to 
reject this is to stultify the reason that has 
been given us as our guide. 

45 



II 

OBJECTIONS 



Can you doubt whether these things, wrought 

with such forethought, are the works of chance, 

or of intelligence? 

— Socrates 



II 



Every great truth that bears upon the 
highest interests of man has found opposers ; 
and we need not wonder that there are 
those who question the validity of the ar- 
gument from design. Truth costs noth- 
ing ; not so behef . Truth is given away ; 
beUef rests on conviction and must be ac- 
quired, often only after a long struggle 
against inclination, prejudice, fashion, and 
the spirit of the age. 

It is not the least valuable part of the 
discipline of life that each of us must find 
out for himself what is worthy of belief 
amid hostile views, must contend for his 
creed, if he would have a good one, as the 
warrior of old fought for the spurs of 
knighthood, and with more than one vigil- 
at-arms. 

It is sometimes said that we see in 
things what we want to see. Let us ap- 
propriate the small fraction of truth this 
D 49 



Ideas from JNlature 



saying contains, and make sure that what 
we want to see is the truth of things. 

I do not think the search for truth is 
so difficult an enterprise as it is often rep- 
resented, if there is first a loyal purpose. 
Of opposing teachings offered us, many 
may be recognized at sight as worthless, 
and thrown away; others, by comparison, 
shown to be inferior, may be laid aside. 
Doctrines **with some truth in them" are 
not suitable ; gilded brass is not the kind of 
material for character building ; we want 
the pure gold of truth at any cost, and we 
may find it. Some teachings are good, that 
is, true ; others are bad, they tend down- 
ward, they relax the moral muscle, they 
dull the nice sense of loyalty to the right, 
they are false. Doubt as you will with that 
scientific doubt that leads to a careful 
examination of the foundations of belief, 
but do not let any one cram you with the 
manufactured difficulties and objections of 
amateur skepticism, else you may find, by 
and by, that you do not know how to be 
honest with yourself. 

Let us consider now some of the most 
50 



Objections 



formidable objections that arise in our own 
minds or are urged by others against the 
argument from design. 

The first is that the evidence is but par- 
tial. We can discover con- , 

,1 . 1 . The Eiridence 
trivance m some thmgs, but 

not in all. In some cases eirtiai 

the appointments of nature operate unfav- 
orably, so far as we can judge. 

The answer to this is that we are unable 
to grasp the whole scheme and meaning of 
human existence in all its parts. If we can 
discover helpful contrivance in some things, 
especially those of which we know most, 
and which are most intimately concerned 
in our own well-being, as we do in the 
structure of our own bodies and the liberal 
provision made for our happiness in earth, 
air, water, food, we have positive evidence 
of benevolent design which no amount of 
negative evidence can invalidate. 

In reference to the seemingly more 
weighty form of the objection that, look- 
ing from our own standpoint, we are obliged 
to regard some of the results of the work- 
ing of natural law as hostile, there is a still 

51 



Ideas from JNlature 



more weighty answer. Man is not intended 
to be a mere nursling waited on by the 
obedient processes of nature. So, he would 
always continue a baby ; he was intended 
to become, in reality as well as in name, a 
man. Difficulties, obstacles, trials, are ap- 
pointed him in order to make a man of 
him — if possible. There is nothing in 
which the evidence of design is more satis- 
factory than in the discipline of hardship 
appointed us in life, and which alone can 
transform the raw recruit into a good 
soldier. 

The argument does not affirm that the 
works of nature are typically perfect. A 
wise man of the olden time has given us 
as a result of his observation, '' I have seen 
an end of all perfection." We find admir- 
able contrivance, catch a glimpse of a per- 
fect plan ; but in everything that relates to 
man, perhaps in everything for man's sake, 
there is a falling short of the perfect in 
execution. Man is out of harmony with 
his environment ; he is a destroyer, a pol- 
luter, a discord. For him the whole crea- 
tion groaneth and travaileth in pain. After 

52 



Objections 



so many centuries of research the best 
explanation we have of this astonishing 
and humihating fact is the simple story 
told in the third chapter of Genesis. The 
course of history, as well as our individual 
experience, has so uniformly sustained the 
fact of a ''fair' that opponents of the 
grand old book have been unable to find 
any better argument against it than ridi- 
cule. In view of all this, we need not 
wonder if man sometimes finds the appoint- 
ments of nature against him, and himself 
compelled, if he would recover his true 
standing, to undergo a discipline that is 
painful. 

No teaching affords an explanation of 
the mystery of evil, but we should not miss 
the point of that ancient parable which re- 
fers its earthly beginning to a being, pos- 
sessed of a certain intelligence and a 
certain freedom, who willed contrary to 
the appointed conditions of his being, so 
linking suffering with sin. The patriarch 
of Uz was given a course of object-lessons 
from nature to convince him that God 
knows best ; for us, to assure us that God 

53 



Ideas from plature 



loves best, there is the Cross ; yet neither 
answer solves this darkest of earth's enig- 
mas, though both emphasize the terrible 
reality of evil. However, the mystery is 
not wholly dark. *^ Made perfect through 
suffering" is anything but an unmeaning 
term to those who have learned how the 
soul refines and develops its noblest powers ; 
and, much as we must regret the existence 
of moral evil, we know that character grows 
strong in proportion as we resist tempta- 
tion. The purpose of trial in the evolu- 
tion of manhood is not difficult to under- 
stand.^ 

A second objection is more philosophical: 
Why should an infinite Creator make use 

. of contrivance ? If he wishes 

use of . . r 1- 

certam varieties of climate, 

JVEechanism ^j^^ ^^^ ordain them, instead 
of endowing one or more substances ex- 
ceptionally, and using them to construct a 

^ It is also a matter of fact that if Christianity is truth- 
ful in representing this world as a school of moral 
probation, we cannot conceive a system better adapted 
to this end than is the world, or a better schoolmaster 
than Christianity. — Romanes, '•''Thoughts on Religion,^^ 

54 



Objections 



vast circulating system in sea and air to 
bring about the same result ? Why not 
endow a simple membrane with the faculty 
of sight, instead of forming the eye with 
its admirable but complicated and delicate 
structure ? 

To this I offer the following answer. 
Man is designed to become a worker ; for 
his education a long period of growth, and 
surroundings that incite to and reward ac- 
tivity have been afforded. The substances 
furnished in nature are his raw material ; 
he can acquire skill to use them. The 
forces of nature are his slaves ; he can find 
out how to slip their necks beneath his 
yoke. The laws of nature furnish the 
sure foundation on which he may build ; 
contrivances in nature supply models for 
his imitation. Man's Creator is a worker 
as well, and in the constitution he has 
given to nature has put honor upon his 
laws by using them, thus surrounding 
man with lessons to stimulate his powers 
of invention and discovery, and to wit- 
ness to the character and purpose of his 
Maker. 

55 



Ideas from plature 



A third objection is, that the adaptations 

-, . . . found in nature and inter- 
Comcidence ^ . ^ ^ . 

^. , . preted as evidences of wise 

Simulating , . , . , . . 

'^ ^ ^ design may be simply comci- 

lDssi(5ii 

^ dences, the result of acci- 

dent, not purpose. 

This can never be very formidable ; it is 
of the order of objections men raise when 
they wish to escape a conclusion they sus- 
pect to be true. Such curious harmony of 
events without purpose does occur occa- 
sionally in the experience of every one, and 
may sometimes be invested by the super- 
stitious with undue importance ; but they 
are too rare, too trivial, too transient, too 
ambiguous, to be classed along with such 
significant facts as the anomalous expan- 
sion of water, the fitness of the bird's 
wing for flying, the man's hand for grasp- 
ing, and others in almost endless array. 

Fourth : it may be thought that the 
doctrine of evolution, which occupies such 
a prominent position in bio- 
logical speculation, furnishes 
an objection to the argument from design 
by rendering it unnecessary. 

56 



Objections 



This theory is an attempt to explain the 
complexity of living things now on the 
earth by descent, with variation, from one 
or at least only a few primitive forms. It 
relies on known facts, {a) That the off- 
spring resembles the parent — heredity ; 
(b) that this resemblance is not rigid — 
variatio7i ; {c) that new characteristics ac- 
quired by variation may be preserved by 
inheritance ; {d) that if this process could 
continue in a definite line for a sufficient 
length of time, differences might at last 
be produced in animals descended from 
the same ancestors such as those which 
now distinguish different species. 

Clearly enough there is evolution in 
nature. The most superficial observer 
can scarcely fail to notice, ''First the 
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in 
the ear." Whoever will set himself to 
find out how the seed cast into the earth 
springs up, will find more evolution; and 
yet more if he follow the transformations 
through which the germ becomes the ani- 
mal. To extend the process and make it 
account for the origin of all the differences 

57 



Ideas from plature 



that distinguish the various species of 
plants and animals was an idea likely to 
occur to some speculative mind; and it 
did occur long ago. But the difficult part 
of the work remained, to explain the ex- 
planation, to assign a sufficient natural 
cause to evolution. The eager discussions 
of the day show us that this has not yet 
been done to the satisfaction of all natural- 
ists. 

Mr. Darwin's name is associated with 
an explanation which, if it does not assign 
a sufficient cause, is believed by many to 
point out a true cause. He noted the suc- 
cess that attends the breeder's efforts to 
produce new varieties of animals possess- 
ing valuable qualities, speed, strength, 
beauty, — a process which may be called 
artificial selectioUy — and he reasoned that 
similar changes might be produced by 
natural agencies and result in specific dif- 
ferences. This is natural selection; the 
breeder's office is performed by that thing 
we all hate and fear so much, yet which, 
curiously enough, seems to be the uniform 
attendant of all earthly progress, want. 

58 



Objections 



Life's family soon becomes so large that 
there is not enough food to go around, 
and there results from this awkward state 
of affairs that struggle for existence with 
which we are all so sadly familiar. In 
this the fortunate possessor of a helpful 
variation, or a ready adaptability to new 
conditions, is victor. There is thus 
brought about, by this survival of the 
fittest in the struggle for existence, what 
we now see, a great variety of plants and 
animals nicely adjusted to the conditions 
of the world in which they live, their en- 
vironment. 

Whether or not the different factors 
already proposed, natural selection, sexual 
selection, the reaction of organism and 
environment, strain produced by effort, 
any or all of them, afford a sufficient me- 
chanical explanation of the mechanics of 
evolution is a scientific question, to be 
answered by scientific investigation. If 
such explanation has not yet been found 
it is reasonable to believe that it will be; 
but when found it will reveal merely me- 
chanical processes, — including physical and 

59 



Ideas from jlature 



chemical, — furnishing more adaptations to 
enforce the argument from design. 

Granting that there has been evolution 
in nature, we notice that it emphasizes 
certain considerations which argue strongly 
for belief in a Creator. 

1. As to the origin of life. Evolution 
substitutes a natural process, modifica- 
tion of a living organism, for 
special creative acts in the 
origin of species — using the 
term origm very much as we 

do when we speak of the origin of a city. 
Of the origin of the first living being it 
can tell us nothing ; it is obliged to assume 
it. Evolution is not a substitute for crea- 
tion ; if things were evolved, that does 
not imply that they evolved themselves, 
much less that they evolved themselves 
out of nothing. 

2. The cause of the adaptation of the 
living being to its surroundings. Life is 
possible only under certain definite condi- 
tions, to which the organism must be 
nicely adjusted. Evolution is obliged to 

assume these adaptations as existing. 

60 



Objections 



3. The occurrence of favorable varia- 
tions. Granting that natural selection ac- 
counts for the preservation of such varia- 
tions as are useful to the being in its 
struggle for existence, it can give us no 
aid in understanding how these helpful 
variations are produced. It must assume 
a tendency to fitness operating in nature. 

4. The continuous progress of evolu- 
tion along definite lines, as in the forma- 
tion of the skeleton, the teeth, or the eye 
of the higher animals. The insufficiency 
of evolution without the guidance of in- 
telligence is very evident here. 

5. The progressive harmonious varia- 
tion of the different parts of animals 
which naturalists describe as necessary to 
the production of new species. Mr. Dar- 
win speaks of the whole organism as being 
"so tied together during its growth and 
development, that when slight variations 
in any one part occur, and are accumulated 
through natural selection, other parts be- 
come modified. ' ' Accidental variation can- 
not account for harmonious variation. 

All these limitations of the theory have 
61 



Ideas from jslature 



been pointed out by its leading expound- 
ers. It gives us a magnificent extension 
of our view of the order of the world, but 
it cannot even attempt to account for the 
origin and maintenance of that order. It 
modifies our conception of the manner in 
which the adaptations seen in nature were 
produced, but only renders it more reason- 
able to regard them as the result of intel- 
ligent purpose. 

The evolutionary process may even be 
carried back and applied to the original 
material of nature. We have only to assume 
that during the cooling of the nebula from 
which our solar system was formed, differ- 
ent associations of matter took place ; those 
best fitted to the conditions remained ; the 
unfit dissolved to give place to the fit. 
Thus our world and all that it contains, 
living and not living, was developed by 
natural processes, acting under one great 
law, from a material relatively simple and 
formless. 

Evolution is a grand hypothesis, in ac- 
cord with much that we know, and holds 

the field as the most probable conception, 

62 



Objections 



in the present state of our knowledge, of 
the method of the Creator. But it is 
merely a method, it is neither a cause nor a 
force, and itself requires to be accounted for. 

Granting the existence of matter and 
energy, no imaginable interaction of the 
two would produce any tendency to fitness, 
unless conditioned by an intelligence rec- 
ognizing what is fit. An infinite number 
of attempts under the guidance of fortuity 
would only lead to chaos worse confounded, 
not to the astonishing complexity and 
harmony of adaptations which nature 
everywhere reveals. There would be no 
tendency through immeasurable ages to 
the conditions that fit water for its uses or 
the eye or the ear to its functions, unless 
behind the operations of nature acted One 
who worketh all things after the counsel 
of his will.^ 

But here the skeptical philosopher may 

startle us with a fifth objec- ^^^ 

Merc 
tion that is at least intended 

to be fatal. The argument ^^ 

from skillful contrivance to intelligent 

^ ** Relics of Primeval Life," Dawson, p. 323. 

63 



Ideas from ]^a1mre 



design is legitimate, he may tell us, only 
so long as it confines itself to human work- 
manship ; we may not extend it beyond. 

This entirely misstates the argument, 
which is not a mere reasoning from human 
works to divine, by analogy.^ What is 
claimed is this, that wherever we behold 
useful results evidently produced by skill- 
fully contrived and nicely adapted means 
which our intelligence can appreciate, 
there we must recognize the design of an 
intelligent being. It is the imperative 
demand of reason ; to refuse it would be 
to turn the light that is in us to darkness. 

Another last objection, really breathing 

slaughter, comes not from a philosopher, 

but from a popular exponent 

of modern infidelity. It is 

this : If a watch must have had a maker 

1 The design argument is not drawn from mere re- 
semblance in nature to the work of human intelHgence, 
but from the special character of this resemblance. . . 
The argument, therefore, is not one of mere analogy. 
As mere analogy it has its weight, but it is more than 
analogy. It surpasses analogy exactly as induction sur- 
passes it. It is an inductive argument. — J. S. Mill, 
^^ Essays on Religion, Theisin,'^'' pp. i6g, 170, 

64 



Objections 



because it exhibits skill and the adaptation 
of many parts all working together to one 
end, and man, who made the watch, and 
exhibits in his nature these same qualities 
to a much greater degree, must have had 
a Maker, then, for a still stronger reason 
the Maker of man, so much more wonder- 
ful than man, must also have a maker ; and 
the argument from design is reduced to an 
absurdity. Absurdity enough there is, not 
in the argument from design, but in the 
reckless confusion of thought and misstate- 
ments contained in the objection. 

Of the existence of anything that now 
is, two — and only two — explanations are 
possible. It may have existed always, 
that is, may be eternally existent, which 
means self-existent ; or it may have come 
into existence, in which case it must have 
been brought into existence, for the very 
sufficient reason that from nothing nothing 
can arise. The things whose history is 
limited within the time-duration of our 
globe are events, things which have begun 
to be, and of these we speak when we 

say ^^ every event must have a sufficient 
E 6s 



Ideas from J^ature 



cause." But it is dire bungling to say 
that everything that exists must have had 
a cause, for the first cause, the cause of all, 
must have been uncaused. It is merely a 
modification of this conception, not another 
explanation, to speak of cause behind cause 
in infinite series, man's effort to divide 
eternity into time-stages, so that he may 
reach what intelligence demands, the first 
Cause, the supreme reality. 

Evidently, if we could fix upon a point 
in the past where it might be truly said 
that nothing existed, then nothing could 
now exist, for out of nothing nothing can 
arise. The present existence of anything 
necessitates the eternal existence of some- 
thing. But we do reach a point at which 
we are compelled to say, "Beyond this 
nothing existed save the Eternal." 

Thus our own existence and the exist- 
ence of the world about us proves that 
something must have existed always, the 
Cause of all, uncaused. Science, as well 
as religion, answering the cry of the hu- 
man heart, authorize us to clothe that 

cause with the attributes of personality. 

66 



Objections 



That question of the child, **Who made 
God ? " I hope no parent or teacher — surely 
no Christian parent or teacher — finds diffi- 
cult of answer. If the heathen Plato, 
guided by the light within, could teach 
that we should not attribute time relations 
to the Infinite One, that we should not say 
that God was, or will be, but that God is, 
his existence an eternal present, certainly 
with the sublime doctrine of the I AM 
before us, satisfying heart and brain, we 
should not fail to give this conception to 
the unfolding mind, and let it feel at once 
its own minuteness and its own security, 
as we do more, in the presence of the 
Eternal Father. Because we know so lit- 
tle of the Supreme, makes what we do 
know all the more precious. 

The behef in a Supreme Being is so 
securely imbedded in the human mind that 
it may fairly be called universal. I do not 
know that there never ha^ been, or is not 
now, a race destitute of this belief; but 
all will admit that such a race must be 
most degraded. True, we meet rarely 
with men w^ho have freed themselves, or 

67 - 



Ideas from jlatupe 



think they have freed themselves, from 
all such ''superstition"; but their efforts 
to convince themselves that there is not 
manifested in the universe an intelligence 
superior to their own must be desperate 
and oft renewed. The story told of Na- 
poleon's reply to the atheistic philosophers 
who were trying to emancipate him from 
the necessity of believing in God may be 
true or not, but it is suggestive. He is 
said to have pointed them to the stars, 
which were shining brightly above, and 
asked, ''Gentlemen, who made these .^'' 
The story may be an invention ; the ques- 
tion remains. 

Next among these ideas from nature I 
place care. The Power that works in 
nature watches over all his 
works with a never-failing 
care. Two illustrations from chemistry 
show how this is taught. The object of 
the chemist is to find out what things are 
made of. Most substances existing in na- 
ture or produced by art are found to be 
compounded of two or more simpler sub- 
stances intimately united. These simplest 

6S 



Objections 



constituents of matter we call elements, 
that is, they are elements to us. Of these 
we know about seventy ; all the known 
materials of our world are made up by 
combinations of these. Two of them 
united form water, two others our com- 
mon table salt. The nature of this union 
among elements is most mysterious ; we 
have as yet no explanation of it, for the 
substance they form by their union may be 
quite different from either of them. Com- 
mon salt is made up of sodium, a soft, 
silver-white metal, that will take fire if you 
pour a few drops of water on it, and chlo- 
rine, a heavy yellowish green gas, which 
inhaled will cause instant death; yet the 
two united form this white, brittle solid so 
necessary to healthful life. These com- 
pound substances may be resolved into 
their elements, and the elements recom- 
bined to form the original compounds, by 
methods perfected through long years of 
patient research. Evidently the power 
that constituted nature wrought along 
lines where man may follow, slowly it 

is true, our limited intelligence recogniz- 

69 



Ideas from J^ature 



ing intelligence to which we can set no 
limits. 

As a thoughtful parent, packing the 
boy's trunk for his first long stay from 
home, might half conceal in some corner 
a written message which found would 
speak to his heart of loving solicitude ; so 
our world, often seemingly indifferent to 
how we fare, has within it, only half hid- 
den, messages for him who will read, show- 
ing an unmistakable care for his material 
comfort and intellectual advancement and 
spiritual growth. 

It is not yet a hundred years since one 
of these messages, the solution of a great 
problem in chemistry, was first distinctly 
read and clearly enunciated. Then the 
discovery set the learned world in commo- 
tion ; now it is but a commonplace of our 
text-books. It is that each substance has 
an invariable composition — the elements 
that form a compound are united in an 
exact proportion by weight, and this pro- 
portion never varies. Common salt, for 
example, always consists of twenty-three 

parts by weight of sodium and thirty-five 

70 



Objections 



and five-tenths parts of chlorine, and no 
other proportions of these elements can 
be made to produce that substance. 

It fell to the lot of John Dalton, the 
son of a poor weaver, who from boyhood 
had worked his own way, to give the full 
statement of this grand fact of nature and 
assign a satisfactory explanation, the fam- 
ous atomic theory of Dalton. We may 
form an estimate of the value of Dalton's 
work when we remember that he is as- 
signed a place among the immortals of 
science beside Newton. 

Every advance of chemistry supplies 
new impetus to the progress of the world. 
It is instructive to consider how much the 
practical application of the discoveries of 
this science has contributed to individual 
well-being and national prosperity. It 
aids man in his work on the farm, in the 
mine, in the factory; it is ever present in 
the home ; it watches over the preparation 
of food for the well and medicine for the 
sick. Roscoe says that the standing of a 
people among manufacturing nations may 
be estimated by the amount they use of one 

71 



Ideas fpom JNlature 



of its products. An attempt to do without 
its aid would drop the most prosperous 
nations into beggary. As a means of ed- 
ucation its methods of patient research 
and rigorous verification give it still greater 
value. 

But we have higher needs than these. 
Can the discovery of the laws of chemical 
combination, that have proved so helpful 
as the basis of a science, aid us in answer- 
ing any of those questions that express 
the loftier aspirations of the soul ? Un- 
questionably it does. These laws point out 
to us that in the exact and unvarying com- 
position of all substances we have ever 
present before us the evidences of unfail- 
ing care. A fragment of quartz picked 
up in a ramble may seem an unmeaning 
thing, but analysis will show that it is 
made up of two elements combined with 
an accuracy which our most delicate 
methods can only approach. And wher- 
ever one finds it, forming great masses of 
rock, ground to fragments and strewing 
the desert, trodden into the mire of the 

streets, or sparkling in the crystal, it will 

72 



Objections 



yield the same elements in the same un- 
varying ratio. And the like is true of 
every other compound. 

The mind turns spontaneously to the 
question of Isaiah : ^* Who hath measured 
the waters in the hollow of his hand, and 
meted out heaven with the span, and com- 
prehended the dust of the earth in a 
measure, and weighed the mountains in 
scales, and the hills in a balance ? '' To- 
day question and answer are re-echoed, 
not alone by poet and seer, but by the 
worker in the laboratory, where men put 
nature to the torture by fire, pry into its 
secrets with the microscope, weigh its tes- 
timony in the balance, examine its answers 
in the dry light of science, and with the 
precision of the mathematical formula. 

Additional testimony to the same truth 
comes from another source. Not only has 

each substance a fixed com- 

V • u 4. '4. u J £ -^ Plans in the 
position, but it has a definite 

internal structure — a plan on IwUSTJ 

which it is built. This is shown externally 

in those regular geometrical forms called 

crystals, which minerals tend to assume 

73 



Ideas from plature 



when allowed to solidify undisturbed. We 
find them in nature ; but the testimony of 
things is most forcible when it comes as 
an answer to our own questions. Take a 
pinch of table salt, dissolve it in a tea- 
spoonful of water, spread the clear liquid 
on a glass plate, and watch it through a 
lens. The water dries up and the solid is 
deposited on the glass plate. This was to 
be expected, but not so the manner in 
which it is done. The solid is not left as 
an incrustation on the glass, but the invisi- 
ble materials are drawn away from inter- 
vening spaces, and built together into 
regular forms — tiny cubes with beautifully 
sculptured faces. 

The significance of all this is not easily 
overrated. The power behind nature is 
here seen at work, operating according to 
a clearly defined plan toward a definite end. 
But there is more than power and intelli- 
gence shown in this ; there is the added 
revelation of care, care that extends to the 
invisible particles of matter and handles 
them more deftly than the skilled builder 
can handle his materials. So other sub- 

74 



Objections 



stances yield results, like but varied, for 
the builder of the universe is not limited 
in mechanics. 

Any one who has watched this process 
closely, has seen the symmetrical bodies 
take shape under the microscope, gathering 
into isolated crystals, branching out at 
definite angles, shooting up in bundles of 
divergent fibres like the lines of an advan- 
cing host, will remember the awe inspired 
by the sight. It seems as though one 
could almost hear the order given that 
called each well-drilled particle to its place 
in the ranks. ^' Consider the lilies how 
they grow" was the lesson of the world's 
supreme Teacher to the worrying and the 
disheartened. For the inquiring and halt- 
ing of our day, science utters the same im- 
plied assurance ; for the power that watches 
over the minutest particles of matter can- 
not be unmindful of the need of the hu- 
man soul. 

This assurance of the care of the Creator 
is a very precious thought to us, and it is 
the more significant to find it taught in 
nature, the workmanship of the Creator, 

75 



Ideas from plature 



because nature often appears heedless. Its 
forces are so resistless that they seem as 
ready to crush us as to nourish us. It is so 
boundless that our own individual existence 
appears too insignificant to be regarded. 

We not unfrequently meet with argu- 
ments framed in this way — it is a favorite 
with the professional vender of difficulties 
and objections : The universe is too wide, 
he says, with its space without limit, 
worlds and suns numberless and vast, to 
allow us to believe that the great Creator 
has devoted so much attention as the 
Christian scheme declares, to this little 
planet of ours which, looked at from a 
moderate (astronomical) distance, would 
appear but as a mote in the sunbeam. 

An ingenious writer, familiar with the 
resources of rhetoric, may pile up from such 
materials a very threatening mountain of 
doubt. Dr. Draper has done this in that 
wickedly inaccurate book ''A History of 
the Conflict between Religion and Sci- 
ence." It would be pertinent to ask such 
reasoners just how large a world or a 

creature must be before its Creator could 

76 



Objections 



see it or deem it worthy of attention, more 
pertinent to point out that he who guides 
the course of events in nature and human 
history has shown a decided preference for 
the use of agents weak and small. An is- 
land is built up in the ocean by the labors 
of that tiny workman, the coral polyp ; a 
continent is composed of grains of sand 
and clay; nay, according to our best sci- 
ence, the world itself is formed from atoms. 
History bristles with similar illustrations, 
showing what feeble agencies have been 
employed to mold the character of a nation, 
shape the destiny of the world. The di- 
rect and unequivocal testimony of the 
science we have been following is this : 
There is not a mountain, however huge, or 
a particle, however small, that does not 
bear witness by the uniform composition 
and structure of its materials to an over- 
ruling care that neither fails nor forgets. 

The unvarying composition of all kinds 
of matter shows that they are 
constituted of exact, weigh- ^ 
able quantities. Thus any ^^jeatea 
sample of common salt yields its ele- 

77 



Ideas from platurs 



ments, sodium and chlorine, in the ratio of 
twenty-three parts by weight of sodium to 
thirty-five and five-tenth parts of chlorine. 
These are called the combining weights 
of those elements and recur whenever 
either of them combines with any other 
element. Numbers representing the com- 
bining weights of the other elements are 
found in a similar way. These significant 
facts have led to a belief that matter is 
composed of atoms ^ minute indivisible parts 
having a fixed weight, the combining weight 
above referred to, and consequently always 
the same for the same element, but differ- 
ent for different elements. According to 
this explanation, the numbers twenty-three 
and thirty-five and five-tenths represent the 
weights of the atoms, or least parts, of so- 
dium and chlorine, in terms of the lightest 
atom known, hydrogen. One atom of 
sodium and one of chlorine united by chem- 
ical affinity form a molecule or least part, 
of the substance common salt. 

From these weighable quantities or 
atoms that compose all bodies, another idea 

has been derived by two philosophers of the 

78 



Objections 



first eminence, Sir J. W. Herschel and Pro- 
fessor Clerk-Maxwell. It is that matter 
declares itself to be a created thing. The 
term atom, or that of molecule, is used in 
the discussion on account of its definite- 
ness, not because the argument relies on 
the atomic theory; for it rests on the uni- 
formity of the combining weights as shown 
by analysis and is unaffected by theory. 

Before quoting the words of these au- 
thorities, let us consider the question to 
which they apply. One of our greatest 
intellectual difficulties is to form any satis- 
factory notion concerning the origin of 
things. How did nature come into exist- 
ence ? True, it is quite as impossible for 
the finite mind to comprehend present ex- 
istence, with all it implies, as to grasp the 
idea of origins. But of our own present 
existence we have the direct evidence of 
thought, and the experience of external 
things gained through the senses convin- 
ces us of the existence of realities outside 
us ; while the beginning transcends both 
thought and experience. Reason and sense 
compel us to believe in the existence of an 

79 



Ideas from JNlature 



external world, but afford no hint or analogy 
to aid us in understanding how it came into 
existence. 

Starting with the certainty of present 
existence, we find it necessary to believe 
in the eternal existence of something. Are 
matter and energy thus eternal ? or are 
they dependent entities, creatures of a first 
Cause ? It is true that there is a very 
simple solution offered in the words, " In 
the beginning God created." God is the 
eternal existence ; besides him and his 
creation nothing exists. But this solution, 
although it is admitted to afford the only 
sure and sufficient basis for both science 
and philosophy, is not acceptable to all. 

A belief in the eternal existence of mat- 
ter is sometimes adopted as an escape from 
the theory of creation. Leaving out of 
the question all other considerations, it 
would evidently be most satisfactory if 
matter itself could testify concerning its 
own origin, as the gold coin testifies of the 
mint in which it was struck. This is what 
it is claimed to do by Herschel and Max- 
well, examining it in the light of the most 



80 



Objections 



advanced scientific research. Their argu- 
ment is briefly this : The atoms of each 
element exist in countless multitudes, but 
are all alike ; this effectually disposes of 
the idea of an eternally existing, that is a 
self-existing, matter, because it shows that 
the atoms have all the essential qualities of 
manufactured articles, like similar parts of 
many watches, all made in the same ma- 
chine. To make sure that we do not miss 
the great significance of this, let us borrow 
light from an illustration. 

A friend shows you a rounded pebble of 
limestone which he tells you he picked up 
on the seashore, and he maintains that it 
was brought to its present form by the ac- 
tion of the waves. You are inclined to 
believe him and agree with him, not only 
because of his assertion and apparent sin- 
cerity, but because you have noticed that 
the tendency of such action is to give 
a rounded form. On closer examination 
you find that the pebble is an exact sphere. 
Doubt arises ; here is an exactness that is 
seemingly incompatible with the action of 

forces not guided by purpose. Then your 
F 8i 



Ideas from J^ature 



friend shows you a second pebble of the 
same material and appearance as the first. 
You are now almost certain that his ex- 
planation of the manner in which they 
were formed is erroneous. Proceeding in 
the inquiry you find that the two pebbles 
have exactly the same size, shape, and 
weight. Now you are fully convinced that 
your friend is wrong ; the exact shape and 
the perfect equality of weight suggests 
design as the only rational explanation. 

But he has scores of them, all like the 
first, and other spheres of granite, others 
of quartz; all of the same kind are alike, 
but each kind differs from all the other 
kinds. You look at them and you know 
that they are manufactured articles ; each 
kind testifies that it is as it is because 
some workman, and a very skillful work- 
man, designed that it should be so and 
made it so. 

Now apply this reasoning about the peb- 

, . bles to the atoms of the ele- 

Tlie Unifom ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ 

]V[y3?iads ^j^jj^g^ ^^ ^j^^ combining 

weights of these elements. We prepare 

82 



Objections 



hydrogen in the laboratory to-day by pour- 
ing an acid on a metal ; it has certain 
properties by which we recognize it, a cer- 
tain proportion by weight in which it unites 
with other elements, its atomic weight. We 
procure it from coal which has lain for 
ages in the earth's crust ; we extract it 
from a meteorite that has come from no one 
knows where in the regions of space. Its 
properties are the same, its atoms are the 
same, no matter where procured, or in what 
quantities. This unvarying sameness of the 
atoms is as truly the manufacturer s stamp 
as is the uniform impression on the coin. 

For fear of misapprehension let us turn 
around and look at the subject from the 
opposite side. Suppose some one asks : 
'' Why may not these atoms be all alike 
and yet self -existent .^ " On this supposi- 
tion each atom is a separate, independent 
existence, self-caused. That even two 
should arise just alike is in the highest 
degree improbable. That the millions 
which have been examined should have all 
been alike is impossible, unless they all had 
a connection in origin sufficient to secure 

S3 



Ideas from jslature 



this uniformity. Such connection in origin 
simply means that one being made them all. 

Now I think we are prepared to compre- 
hend the significance of the opinions given 
by the two philosophers I have named. 

Sir J. W. Herschel says : ^^ Chemical 
analysis most certainly points to an origin, 
and effectually destroys the idea of an 
eternal self-existent matter, by giving to 
each of its atoms the essential character at 
once of a manufactured article, and a sub- 
ordinate agent." ^ 

The following are the words of Professor 
Clerk-Maxwell : ^^ Each molecule through- 
out the universe bears impressed on it the 
stamp of a metric system as distinctly as 
does the mHre of the Archives at Paris, or 
the double royal cubit of the Temxple of 
Karnac. 

'^ No theory of evolution can be formed 
to account for the similarity of molecules, 
for evolution necessarily implies continuous 
change, and the molecule is incapable of 
growth or decay, generation or destruction. 

'' None of the processes of nature, since 

1 ** Dissertation on the Study of Natural Philosophy." 

84 



Objections 



the time when nature began, have produced 
the shghtest difference in the properties of 
any molecule. We are therefore unable to 
ascribe either the existence of the molecules 
or the identity of their properties to the 
operation of any of the causes which are 
called natural, 

" On the other hand, the exact equality 
of each molecule to all others of the same 
kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well 
said, the essential characteristics of a manu- 
factured article, and precludes the idea of 
its being eternal and self-existent. 

'' They continue this day as they were 
created, perfect in number and measure 
and weight, and from the ineffaceable 
character impressed on them we may learn 
that those aspirations after accuracy in 
measurement, truth in statement, and jus- 
tice in action, which we reckon among our 
noblest attributes as men, are ours because 
they are essential constituents of the image 
of Him who in the beginning created, not 
only the heaven and the earth, but the ma- 
terials of which heaven and earth consist." ^ 

1 ** Nature," Vol. IV., p. 270. 

85 



Ill 

EH ERGg 



In contemplation of created things, 
By steps we may ascend to God. 

— zMilton 



Ill 



These discussions were begun with a 
sentence from a text-book of chemistry, 
**The sensible universe is made up of 
matter and energy" ; matter, the material 
of which all bodies consist ; energy, that 
which produces changes in matter. The 
forces of nature, light, heat, electricity, 
chemical affinity, are described in science 
as different forms of energy. It is found 
that these may be converted one into 
another, through many changes, without 
loss. This is expressed in the scientific 
doctrine of the conservation of energy, 
the word conservation, firmly imbedded in 
scientific language, implying the belief 
that, as with matter so with energy, there 
is a Power in nature that preserves. 

A very hasty glance at same of the 

properties of the substances best known 

to us showed that science, though dealing 

with material things, does not justify ma- 

89 



Ideas from J^ature 



terialism, but that the order manifested in 
nature leads us up to a Divine Intelligence 
as its cause. The exact composition and 
individual structure of each kind of mat- 
ter proclaim immanent care ; the invaria- 
bleness of the atom shows it to be the 
work of a Creator. An inquiry into the 
nature of energy leads to the conclusion 
that it also is a dependent existence. 

We observe that not all the exhibitions 
of energy we see are due to what we call 
natural causes. Some of them are pro- 
duced by man. The rush of the train ; 
the motion of factory wheels ; the im- 
measurable activities which civilization 
employs, are of this kind. The motion of 
a ball thrown by the hand is traced to the 
motion of the muscles of the arm of the 
thrower acting in obedience to his will. 
In like manner, all the varied motions 
just referred to are directly traceable to 
the same origin, the human will acting ac- 
cording to a preconceived plan. Thus all 
exhibitions of energy which we are able to 
trace to their source, lead us to the same 

source, the will of an intelligent being. 

90 



Energy 

Let us listen to what the men who have 
studied the subject most profoundly, both 
from the side of science 
and philosophy, have to say Scientists 
about the inference fairly 
deducible from this. 

Herbert Spencer : *' The force by which 
we ourselves produce changes, and which 
serves to symbolize the cause of changes 
in general, is the final disclosure of all 
analysis. . . All other modes of conscious- 
ness are derived from our own conscious- 
ness of exerting force." 

Sir John Herschel : *' It is but reasona- 
able to regard the force of gravitation as 
the direct or indirect result of a Con- 
sciousness or a Will existing somewhere." 

Dr. Carpenter : *^ Force must be taken 
as the direct expression of Will." 

Sir William Grove : ^' In all phenomena 
the more closely they are investigated the 
more are we convinced that, humanly 
speaking, neither matter nor force can be 
created nor annihilated. . . Causation is 
the will, creation is the act, of God." 

The Duke of Argyle : '' Science, in the 
91 



Ideas from plature 



modern doctrine of the conservation of 
energy and the convertibihty of forces, is 
already getting hold of the idea that all 
kinds of force are but forms and mani- 
festations of some one central force issu- 
ing from some one fountain-head of 
power. . . This one force, into which all 
others return again, is itself but a mode 
of action of the Divine Will/' 

These considerations are sufficient to 
assure us that nature, interpreted accord- 
ing to the most advanced science by the 
men best qualified to interpret it, pro- 
claims a personal God as its maker and 
ruler. It does not make known merely a 
great Architect of the universe, but a 
Creator ; it is at one with religion in re- 
ferring both matter and energy to their 
origin in Eternal Mind. 

But can the finite mind know the In- 
finite ? Who was it that asked, '' Canst 
thou by searching find out 
Is Qod God.?" The great inge- 
Un^nowable? ^^.^^ ^.^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ 

been cast on man's ability to know that 

there is some reality behind the phenom- 

92 



Energy 



ena of mind and matter, has given us, 
through various changes, the cleverest of 
all devices yet hit upon for dismissing the 
thought of God. This is agnosticism, 
presumed by its adherents to have some 
special attractions for the student of sci- 
ence. The name agnosticism is of recent 
origin, but the doctrine dates back at least 
as far as Hume. Huxley and Spencer are 
its greatest modern exponents. The ag- 
nostic does not affirm either the existence 
or the non-existence of God ; he holds 
that to assert the one is as unphilosophic 
as to assert the other. 

Herbert Spencer began his ''First Prin- 
ciples" with an introduction containing his 
statement of the argument : ''The objects 
and actions surrounding us, no less than 
the phenomena of our own consciousness, 
compel us to ask a cause; in our search 
for a cause we discover no resting-place 
until we arrive at the hypothesis of a first 
Cause ; and we have no alternative but to 
regard this first Cause as infinite and ab- 
solute." 

He then uses and extends ManseFs ar- 
93 



Ideas from jlature 



gument, the sum of which is, that the 
human mind cannot comprehend the infin- 
ite and the absolute, that every form of 
thought under which we attempt to con- 
ceive of either leads to conclusions that are 
unthinkable. 

Much of this is no doubt true. As long 
ago as the time of Job it was clearly 
understood that man cannot find out the 
Almighty to perfection. Whenever man 
undertakes to do this, his search will lead 
him into contradictions of thought ; but 
this does not prove, as the agnostic argues, 
that God is both unknown and unknowa- 
ble. Mr. Spencer is a man of great specu- 
lative ability, possessing a very extensive, 
if not profound, acquaintance with science. 
It is hard to understand how any one can 
read his works without admiring the power 
he has shown in the gigantic outline he 
has sketched, and the work he has done 
upon it. He deals largely in dogmatic 
statement, and his judicial method is liable 
at first to produce on the reader the im- 
pression that he claims absolute inerrancy. 
This of course will not be conceded to any 

94 



Energy 

man, and while we grant freely the great 
value of much he has done, we need not 
apologize for testing his speculative views 
before adopting them. Just now let us 
consider this one question : '^Is it certain 
that man cannot know anything of God?" 
First, the incomprehensible is not neces- 
sarily the unknowable. There are many 
things we cannot comprehend, space, for 
example, and Spencer includes space and 
time in the unknowable. Now if any of 
us were to awake at midnight and find the 
building all about us wrapped in flames, 
our movements would at once show that 
we possessed some definite and valuable 
knowledge of time ; and if we were com- 
pelled to leap from a window to save our 
lives, we would greatly prefer a first-story 
window to a fifth-story one, because of 
something which we know for a certainty 
about space. In like manner a thing may 
be unthinkable to us and yet quite true. 
The passage from the last physical effect 
produced by the activity of a sense organ 
to the thought which follows this activity 
is unthinkable. Nothing more truly de- 

95 



Ideas from JNlature 



fies man's power of conception than the 
passage from the disturbance of the phys- 
ical apparatus of hearing by the waves 
of the air to that elevation of soul which 
we experience when we listen to grand 
music or sublime oratory. 

It must be borne in mind that Spencer 
does not deny the existence of God ; he 

, claims not to weaken but to 

The ^giios- strengthen that belief, for he 

uxw o MiiAi g^yg u Qj^iy ijQ a doctrme 
culties which recognizes the un- 
known Cause as co-extensive with all orders 
of phenomena can there be a consistent 
religion or a consistent philosophy." What 
he wishes to convince us of is that the 
Cause is not only unknown but unknow- 
able. In this he has undertaken an im- 
possible task ; the stars in their courses 
fight against him. 

Second, the agnostic's practice is not in 
accordance with his preaching. He con- 
ditions the unconditioned. He declares 
that he knows nothing about God, and 
seeks to convince others that they can 
know nothing, yet he proclaims that God 

96 



Energy 



is unknowable. It is no play upon words 
to say that to know this he must know 
much about God. In truth, the agnostic 
is the man who knows .altogether too much 
about God. He knows more than is true ; 
more than he can give any adequate reason 
for. He knows, or professes to know, that 
the Infinite Creator whom he confesses 
cannot make himself known to man in any 
degree; that man, even with divine aid, 
cannot know anything about his Maker. 
And all he has to offer in evidence is the 
well-worn truism, " The finite cannot com- 
prehend the Infinite." As a matter of 
fact, we are able to know something of 
any intelligent being whose work we have 
an opportunity to examine, though we are 
utterly unable to comprehend being in any 
mode. 

Granted only the foothold of faith which 
the agnostic admits, — an infinite, independ- 
ent First Cause, — it follows that the system 
of nature, the sum of effects, is his work ; 
and this work studied with honesty and 
humility is found to be intelligible, and 

does enable us, not to comprehend God, 
G 97 



Ideas from plature 



but to apprehend many things about him. 
It gives us the strongest reasons for be- 
lieving that God is, and that he is not only 
powerful but also wise and benevolent. 

There are not wanting, even now, signs 
that the charm of the new device is broken. 
The men who can be attracted by a God 
of whom nothing can be known are mainly 
those who do not wish to retain the thought 
of God. A creed with nothing in it is 
scarcely worth professing ; most of its 
willing adherents gravitate away from it 
toward blank negation. The few who 
were deceived into believing that evolution 
had dethroned God, and hastily, though 
sadly, renounced their faith in him, come 
at last to see, as George Romanes did so 
lately, that in the fiercest glare of scientific 
truth Christianity is a wholly reasonable 
belief, and return to it with joy. 

Those acquainted with the biological 
advances of the past quarter of a century 
are familiar with the name of George Ro- 
manes.* A graduate of Cambridge, he soon 
distinguished himself as an original investi- 
gator and brilliant writer. He had been 

98 



Energy 

educated in evangelical views, which he 
loved and defended. In 1873 he won the 
Burney Prize with an essay on *^ Christian 
Prayer and General Laws,'* and was re- 
garded as a champion of the Christian 
faith. Then came the fierce contest be- 
tween popular theology and a rising sci- 
ence, which seemed to many, and to Ro- 
manes among the number, about to estab- 
lish the reign of materialism. In 1878 
he published a book entitled '' A Candid 
Examination of Theism," in which he re- 
jected belief in a personal God and Chris- 
tian revelation, not flippantly, but sincerely 
and with sorrow. In their place he ac- 
cepted the agnostic philosophy. Later in 
life he began to apply his skepticism to the 
examination of his doubts about religion, 
and found that they gave way under the 
test, found that it is ^treasonable to be a 
Christian believer." At his death he left 
a manuscript containing the notes for a 
work he had intended to write. These 
notes are now published under the title 
''Thoughts on Religion." They are the 
record of a very real search after truth, 

99 



Ideas fpom plature 



and give a satisfactory answer to the ques- 
tion, '' What bearing has the science of our 
day on belief in God and the Bible?" 
Jesus Christ made a place in his church 
for the honest skeptic who wants evidence 
before he believes, and is ready to believe 
when he gets it. 

The character of Romanes is so manly 
and attractive, his intellect was so vigorous 
and healthy, his search for truth so real, 
so persistent, and at last so successful, that 
I have selected a few passages from his 
** Life," ^ written by one who shared his in- 
most thoughts, in order that we may learn 
his secret and take new courage from the 
helpful lesson of his experience. It is a 
lesson for the time, especially a lesson for 
young thinkers, coming in their turn to 
some slight degree face to face with things 
as they are, and wishing, as all should 
wish, to think for themselves. Too often, 
in this mood, the swellings of conceit may 
be mistaken for the workings of new truth 
within ; or the mere desire to be free from 

i**Life and Letters of George John Romanes," 
Longmans & Co. 

loo 



Energy 



the restraints of Christianity impels one to 
join the cry, " Let us break their bands 
asunder, and cast away their cords from us." 
It is a time to think earnestly, prayerfully ; 
to make sure that we choose the best, that 
is, the truest — the eternally true. 

^^In addition to other scientific and 
purely philosophical work, Mr. Romanes 
had, even while writing his Burney 
Prize, entered on that period of conflict 
between faith and skepticism, which grew 
more and more strenuous, more painful, as 
the years went on, which never really 
ceased until within a few weeks of his 
death, and which was destined to end in a 
chastened, a purified, and a victorious faith. 
His was a religious nature, keenly alive to 
religious emotion, profoundly influenced by 
Christian ideals, by Christian modes of 
thought. As time went on he felt, like all 
philosophically minded men, the impossi- 
bility of a purely materialistic position, 
and as he pondered on the final, ultimate 
mysteries, on God, immortality, duty, he 
arrived very slowly, very painfully, but 
very surely, at the Christian position. 

lOI 



Ideas from JNlature 



^' But the years were, to him and to 
many, years of peculiar and of extraordi- 
nary difficulty. Roughly speaking, the 
time between i860 and 1880 was a time 
of great perplexity to those who wished 
to adhere to the faith of Christendom."^ 

*' In 1878 he had touched the very 
depths of skepticism, and he would have 
rejected the idea of a possibility of return, 
and would have rejected it in terms of un- 
measured regret."^ 

'' The reaction against the conclusions 
of the essay [his ' Candid Examination of 
Theism '] set in far sooner than has been at 
all suspected. Perhaps the first published 
mark of reaction is the * Rede Lecture,' of 
1885."^ 

'^ Many influences were working in him ; 
a ripening judgment, a growth of charac- 
ter, a deepening sense of the inadequacy 
of scientific research, philosophical specu- 
lation, and artistic pleasures to fill the 
vacuum in the soul of man."^ 

^ **Life and Letters of George John Romanes," p. 81. 

''Ibid., p. 87. ^Ibid., p. 86. 

^ Ibid., p. 261. 

102 



Energy 



A beautiful little sonnet written about 
this time (1890) tells better than anything 
else the story of his longings : 

I ask not for thy love, O Lord ; the days 

Can never come when anguish shall atone. 

Enough for me were but thy pity shown, 
To me as to the stricken sheep that strays, 
With ceaseless cry for unforgotten ways — 

Oh, lead me back to pastures I have known, 

Or find me in the wilderness alone, 
And slay me, as the hand of mercy slays. 
I ask not for thy love ; nor e' en so much 

As for a hope on thy dear breast to lie ; 
But be thou still my shepherd — still with such 

Compassion as may melt to such a cry ; 
That so I hear thy feet, and feel thy touch, 

And dimly see thy face ere yet I die. 

And so the soul struggle went on, side 
by side with his splendid work in biologi- 
cal research, in which his interest never 
flagged to the last. 

'' Nothing can be more erroneous than 

to suppose that the change in point of view 

was sudden, or due to any fear of death, 

or that it caused mental suffering to the 

author of 'Thoughts on Religion,' or that 

103 



Ideas from JNlature 



he was influenced by any one, priest or 
layman." ^ 

Not long before his death he said : '' I 
have now come to see that faith is intel- 
lectually justifiable."^ 

'' The change that came over his mental 
attitude may seem almost incredible to 
those who knew him only as a scientific 
man ; it does not seem so to the few who 
knew anything of his inner life. To them 
the impression given is not of an enemy 
changed into a friend, of antagonism al- 
tered into submission ; rather is it of one 
who for long has been bearing a heavy 
burden on his shoulders bravely and pa- 
tiently, and who at last has had it lifted 
from him, and lifted so gradually that he 
could not tell the exact moment when he 
found it gone, and himself standing like 
the Pilgrim of the never-to-be-forgotten 
story, at the foot of the Cross, with Three 
Shining Ones coming to greet him."^ 

Lastly, it should be remembered that 
this change from Agnosticism to Christi- 

^ '' Life and Letters of George John Romanes," p. 372. 

'^ Ibid,, p. 379. ^ Ibid., p. 382. 

104 



Energy 



anity was not due to any decline in intel- 
lectual vigor, but was the deliberate act of 
ripened powers and mature judgment. In 
the obituary notice written for the Royal 
Society, Dr. Burdon Sanderson says : ** Up 
to the end he preserved not only his men- 
tal vigor, but the keenness of his interest 
in his scientific pursuits." 

One cannot help thinking with regret 
how much lasting value might have been 
added to the helpful and illustrious career 
of Huxley, if when he quarreled with ec- 
clesiasticism he too had turned to a patient 
search for the faith that satisfies, to be 
guided at last to the school of Christ. 

I think there are many who do not know 
that what Gladstone has said of the master 

minds among men of affairs, 

. 1 . r r . Attitude of 

IS also true of men of science : 

the vast majority of the lead- ^^® Leaders 
ers in all departments are Christian men. 
The desperate and continued efforts that 
are made to produce the impression that 
science discredits Christianity are mainly 
the work of men who have no real knowl- 
edge of the doctrines of Christianity; it 



Ideas from JNlature 



is a work seldom joined in by any one 
who could be called a master in science. 
On the other hand, the ranks of all the 
sciences contain men unsurpassed in genius 
and attainments, holding that the author 
of nature is the God of the Bible, men 
who freely testify to the truth and value of 
Christianity. 

Turning to the past we have the illus- 
trious names of Kepler, Newton, Pascal, 
Herschel, Buckland, Faraday, Miller, Brew- 
ster. Among their worthy successors, yet 
living or but lately passed away, may be 
singled out Guyot, Joseph Henry, Asa 
Gray, Clerk-Maxwell, Carpenter, Balfour 
Stewart, Sir James Paget, Sir George 
Stokes, Sir Andrew Clark, Adams, Lock- 
yer. Young, Lord Kelvin. Among chem- 
ists of high repute are Sir H. E. Roscoe, 
of England, and Professor Cooke, of Har- 
vard. Among geologists, Geikie, the first 
authority in Great Britain ; James D. Dana, 
Louis Agassiz, and Sir Wm. Dawson, in 
America. These and many others rank- 
ing beside or next after them, show by 

their Christian faith that nothing has yet 

io6 



Energy 



been discovered by scientific research which 
renders a belief in God unreasonable, or in 
any sense unscientific. 

More than this is true. The free dis- 
cussions now going on as the real bearings 
of the doctrine of evolution become more 
apparent, and the keen scrutiny of natural 
selection and other explanations of the 
method of evolution in the light of extend- 
ed observation, tend to emphasize the de- 
pendence of nature on God, and illustrate 
anew the wisdom of Bacon's words : ** It 
is true that a little philosophy inclineth 
man's mind to atheism ; but depth in phi- 
losophy bringeth men's minds about to re- 
ligion." 

That the progress of knowledge has 
not weakened the force of these words w^e 
have the testimony of the foremost living 
representative of science, a man who has 
won the honor and gratitude of the world. 

Lord Kelvin, a president of the British 
Association, president of the Royal Soci- 
ety, has also been chairman of the Chris- 
tian Evidence Society. Speaking in the 

latter capacity he said : 

107 



Ideas from plature 



** I have long felt that there was a gen- 
eral impression in the non-scientific world 
that the scientific world believes science 
has discovered ways of explaining all the 
facts of nature without adopting any defi- 
nite belief in a Creator. I have never 
doubted that that impression was utterly 
groundless." ^ 

These are Clerk-Maxwell's words : '' I 
have looked into most philosophical sys- 
tems, and I have seen that none of them will 
work without a God." ^ His biographer 
says of him : '^ For more than half of his 
brief life he held a prominent position in 
the very foremost rank of natural philoso- 
phers. In private life he was one of the 
most lovable of men, a sincere and unos- 
tentatious Christian." 

Tyndall tells of dining with Faraday ; 
before dinner Faraday said grace. Tyn- 
dall says : '' I am almost ashamed to call 
his prayer a * saying ' of grace. . . In the 
language of Scripture it might be de- 
scribed as the petition of a son into whose 

1 '* Report of Chr. Evidence Society," 1889, p. 45. 

2 **Life," p. 426. 

108 



Energy 

heart God had sent the Spirit of his Son, 
and who, with absolute trust, asked a bless- 
ing of his father." ^ 

Tyndall seems to have regarded Fara- 
day with more than filial devotion ; and it 
was no mere mild spiritual goodness that 
won his admiration. He says of him : 
" Here, surely, is a strong man. . . Un- 
derneath his sweetness and gentleness was 
the heat of a volcano," and he calls him : 
'^ Just and faithful knight of God." ^ 

Michael Faraday was one of the few 
who in any generation can lay claim to the 
title of philosopher. He believed in God, 
not merely the God of the philosopher, an 
intellectual abstraction receding from us 
as we strive to approach, but the God of 
the Christian, the Heavenly Father, one 
who invites us to draw near, who asks us 
to open the door of our hearts to him, yet 
who grows grander and holier as we feel 
after him and find him. 

There is abroad a spurious reverence 
which would destroy all helpfulness in re- 

^ "Fragments of Science," Vol. I., p. 420. 
2 "Faraday as a Discoverer," pp. 37, 171. 
109 



Ideas from jlature 



ligion, one that forbids us to apply any 
terms to the Author of nature except the 
most abstract and indefinite ones. This, 
v/e are told, is necessary in order to avoid 
the error of attributing human character- 
istics to the divine. Such warnings against 
anthropomorphism generally amount to 
this, that we must empty our words of all 
the significance they have for us before 
we use them in speaking of God, a course 
that reduces God to the unreal and religion 
to indifferentism. 

On the contrary, the Bible has shown 
an insight into the nature of the human 
soul that human philosophy has been un- 
able to attain, and in it the words em- 
ployed to express the attributes of God 
are those whose strength and beauty have 
been made known to us by the holiest and 
most familiar experiences of human life. 
^^ Like as a father pitieth his children, so 
the Lord pitieth them that fear him." 
'^ As one whom his mother comforteth, so 
will I comfort you." ^^ I have called you 
friends." This conception of God as the 

Heavenly Father, the Divine Friend, is 

no 



Energy 

one which man need never mistake, can 
never outgrow. It will always stand above 
him to help him upward, whether he tills 
the field or guides the progress of the 
world. The minds foremost in science 
have not left it behind. 

It has been said that the scientist, as 
such, is not peculiarly fitted to act as judge 
in matters of religion. There is reason 
in this ; no one will hope to establish the 
truth of Christianity by counting votes, or 
by an array of great names, because we 
know that there are men of eminence in 
science, as in other departments of learn- 
ing, who do not subscribe to the Christian 
faith. 

Of these, it should be said in passing, 

not a few have never thoroughly studied 

the highest expression of religious truth 

as we have it in the life and teachings of 

Christ. This was the case with Darwin. 

He received many letters intended to draw 

from him some expression of faith in the 

great doctrines of religion. His uniform 

answer was, in effect : *^ I feel in some 

degree unwilling to express myself publicly 

III 



Ideas from JNlature 



on religious subjects, as I do not feel that 
I have thought deeply enough to justify any 
publicity. . . Now I have never system- 
atically thought much on religion in re- 
lation to science, or on morals in relation 
to society." ^ 

With the majority of active opponents 
of Christianity, the case is quite different. 
They hold up a miserable caricature of 
Christian teachings, and proceed to de- 
molish this caricature as though they were 
destroying Christian truth. This deceives 
mainly those who are willing to be de- 
ceived, for all fair-minded men agree that 
arguments against the perversions of a 
doctrine are of no avail as arguments 
against the truth of that doctrine. 

But the Christian scientist, and he alone, 
can give a satisfactory answer to one grave 
question : " Does science render belief in 
Christianity unreasonable } " There are 
many who declare that it does, and it is in 
this case that the emphatic negative from 

1 *'Life," Vol. I., pp. 275, 276. Very significant, 
as revealing belief, is a letter from Darwin to Romanes, 
published in the *'Life " of the latter, p. 88. 

112 



Energy 

such men as Newton, Faraday, Clerk- 
Maxwell, Kelvin, Dawson, is an assurance 
of the utmost value to us. They have 
tried both, tried them side by side during 
a lifelong experience ; their deliberate ver- 
dict has immense weight. 

The opinions of men who are at once 
candid and able can never be a matter of 
indifference to us, and admissions made by 
some of these who do not rank themselves 
as Christians, often help the puzzled in- 
quirer by sweeping away from his path a 
host of the most popular objections to be- 
lief in Christ. 

But if the study of nature not only 
allows, but favors such belief, how is it 
that we not infrequently 
hear the adjective infidel ^^^^es^of 
joined to the substantive ^^^P^^cisiri 
science ? There is no such thing as in- 
fidel science, though there are infidels 
who would gladly engage science to prop 
up their doubts; there are objections of 
science, falsely so called, and vain philoso- 
phies, but science truly so called, is not 

answerable for any of them. 
H 113 



Ideas from ]\[atiire 



The causes of skepticism are various. 
Not all men are anxious to find truth ; not 
all are willing to accept it when they find 
it. The prime cause of defective faith is 
a defect of will. The claims of God are 
supreme — heart, brain, hand, everything. 
Many do not wish to acknowledge this 
claim ; it humbles the pride of the human 
intellect that would be sufficient to itself, 
interferes with what they call their free- 
dom of action, demands that life be de- 
voted to the service of God ; they have 
other plans. They will not consider that 
God's spiritual laws, like the natural, are 
revelations to us of the conditions to 
which we have been created subject, and 
only in obeying them can we be free ; that 
in fact the evident purpose of our free- 
dom is that we may find out what is true, 
in order that we may do what is right. 
Free thinking is good only when it leads 
to right thinking, for then only is it free. 
Much that is boastfully put forward as 
"free thought'' is in reality thought in 
bondage to human frailty. 

An unwillingness to give the heart leads 
114 



Energy 



men to try to justify the refusal. Some 
seek refuge in metaphysical subtleties, and 
profess to doubt what they are asserting 
belief in by every thought and act of life ; 
others collect the objections to Christian 
belief that have been accumulated during 
many centuries, and give their attitude that 
strange name, ^^ thinking for themselves." 
The man who follows Paul or Calvin 
or Wesley, is at least as much an inde- 
pendent thinker as one who commits the 
guidance of his mind to Hume or Spencer, 
Mill or Ingersoll, and the former has the 
better leader. There is nothing especially 
'^liberal" in rejecting the Bible. 

Not a few have ranked themselves as 
disciples of Darwin, only because they 
have received an impression, often as 
vague as it is false,^ that in some way that 
great naturalist has rendered belief in God 
no longer necessary. When Darwin's 
theory of the origin of species was first 
published it was hailed by materialists as 

^ In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been 
an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a 
Godi.— ''Darwin's Life,'' Vol. /.,/. 274, 

IIS 



Ideas from plature 



a confirmation of their views, and it was 
hastily assumed that natural selection had 
set aside the argument from design, na- 
ture's clearest testimony to the existence 
of an intelligent Creator/ There were 
naturalists who saw the fallacy of this 
conclusion from the first. Huxley ad- 
mitted manfully that evolution leaves the 
argument from design just where it found 
it. 

A few Christian scholars recognized in 
the new teachings fresh revelations of the 
glory of God, but the many were bewil- 
dered by the clamor of debate, and hastily 
committed themselves to a denial of the 
truth of the theory, instead of giving it a 
fair examination. It is so easy to brand a 
doctrine that offends our preconceived no- 
tions as '^ contrary to the Bible" ; but that 
breaks the command to ^' prove all things," 
the only way in which we may find what 
is the good which we are to "hold fast." 

^ The design argument is not an instrument of scien- 
tific research ; it is the only rational explanation of the 
ordered relations between the different parts of nature, 
the harmony which science reveals. 

ii6 



Energy 



I trust we are growing wiser ; but we have 
yet cause to heed Bishop Butler's warning 
not to claim for the Bible what it does 
not claim for itself. As we rid ourselves, 
one by one, of human improvements on 
divine works and ways, we are enabled to 
see more clearly that the rejection of 
Christianity finds no warrant in any dis- 
covery of science. 

There are other causes that hinder men 
from coming to a knowledge of the truth, 
and one is the preoccupation of the mind. 
We may keep ourselves ^^too busy" with 
the pursuits of life, legitimate in them- 
selves, to afford time to consider. The 
day may be so filled with the care of other 
things, business, teaching, study, recrea- 
tion, as to leave not even moments for 
sober thought. We have been warned 
against this as one of the causes why men 
miss the kingdom of heaven. The stu- 
dent of nature is especially in danger from 
this source, as his pursuits are so absorb- 
ing and yield results so valuable. 

Man is closely linked with material na- 
ture, that sum of created things made 

117 



Ideas from JNlature 



known through sense. His life is depend- 
ent on material conditions, and he must 
know something of them or perish. He 
studies them, impelled by this necessity 
seconded by an innate desire to know, and 
the splendid rewards of his study are seen 
when we contrast the material civilization 
of New England with the squalor of the 
savage who once inhabited it ; the contrast 
is not merely in material things, it is a 
contrast between the lore of the medicine 
man and the knowledge and culture of a 
Rumford or a Dana. For the study of 
nature we have the highest warrant, for 
nature is the creation of God. 

It is not strange then, that men have 
devoted their lives to such uses. Knowl- 
edge of nature has grown slowly at first, 
for the reason that man persists in carry- 
ing with him a head full of preconceived 
notions and in trying to find realities to 
match his whims. The history of science 
furnishes one of the most instructive 
chapters in the study of human nature, 
showing as it does how hard it is for us to 

lay aside the childish mind and acquire the 

ii8 



Energy 

childlike mind, the indispensable condition 
of gaining truth. 

But science has flourished where man 
was free ; has flourished most healthfully 
in lands that favored an open Bible. Now 
the time is forever past when even a Hum- 
boldt can be a representative of universal 
science. A man of many acquirements, a 
man of genius, may investigate only a very 
small part of the great field with anything 
that can be called thoroughness, and at the 
end he will be forced to confess that he 
needs to carry over his work into eternity, 
not because he has been disappointed in 
finding so little, but because he finds so 
much ; and for every question he settles a 
score of new ones start up demanding so- 
lution. This is the explanation of the 
splendid humility of Newton, and others 
of like stamp.^ Nature is greater than our 



^ I do feel profoundly grateful. But when I think 
how infinitely little is all that I have done, I cannot 
feel pride ; I only see the great kindness of my scien- 
tific comrades, and of all my friends, in crediting me 
for so much. One w^ord characterizes the most strenu- 
ous of the efforts for the advancement of science that 1 

119 



Ideas from plature 



wildest dreams. Nature knowledge may 
be compared to a spark struck in the dark 
from which a feeble flanle is kindled. 
Ready hands feed the flame ; succeeding 
generations supply it with fresh fuel. Man 
learns to render its light permanent, to in- 
crease its brilliance ; and we rejoice in all 
the wonders revealed within the sphere of 
its illumination, bask ourselves in its light, 
and enjoy its warmth. But the widening 
sphere of the known only reveals the 
greater area of the unknown, into which 
science sends its searchlight and finds no 
hint of a limit. No wonder that in such 
pursuit the eager mind may lose all thought 
of other things. 

It is plain then that the student of na- 
ture may easily become so absorbed in his 
daily work that his mind is wholly pre-oc- 
cupied and he is unready to consider other 

have made perseveringly during fifty-five years ; that 
v^^ord is failur,e. I knovi^ no more of electric and mag. 
netic force or of the relation between ether, electricity, 
and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I 
knew and tried to teach to my students of natural 
philosophy fifty years ago. — Lord Kelvin^ in ^^ A'^a- 
tu7'e,''^ June 2^, i8g6. 

I20 



Energy 



pursuits that reveal truth, or other truth 
besides that which he seeks, or even the 
bearings of what he has discovered on the 
supreme questions of human hfe. True, 
he is bhnded, but it is like a blindness pro- 
duced by gazing at the sun. Worst of all, 
those who try to convince him of his error 
very commonly begin by denying what he 
knows to be true, or by belittling what he 
sees to be great. 

Yet science gives to its thoughtful dis- 
ciple a warning against the danger of this 
narrowness of admitting as truth only that 
which can be seen and handled. The 
verities of science are held, not by sight, 
but by faith. This does not refer to 
theories, such as evolution, the undulatory 
theory of light, or the atomic theory. 
Every student of science knows that these 
are held as convenient explanations in the 
highest degree probable, good working hy- 
potheses, yet not science, only specula- 
tions. The verities held by faith are 
those necessary inferences which reason 
demands. Place two elements together 
under the required circumstances ; they 

121 



Ideas from jiature 



combine and form a new thing in which 
can be distinguished none of the indi- 
vidual qualities of its originals. You at 
once understand that you are in the pres- 
ence of a power capable of producing this 
effect, and you name the cause chemical 
affinity ; you do not know what it is, but 
you do know that it is, and as your 
study extends you learn more and more 
about its effects, its methods, and how 
thoroughly we may rely on its uniform 
action. This is scientific faith, the evi- 
dence of things not seen ; and it is by 
such faith we are enabled to unite our 
knowledge of facts and form a science. 

Religion is not alone in requiring faith ; 
all truth makes a similar demand. That 
the faith it demands may yield well- 
grounded belief, religion offers the same 
method of verification as that which is 
most relied on by science, the experi- 
mental method. 

The proofs of the existence of God are 
various and converging. One line of evi- 
dence is furnished by the study of nature, 
whether we pursue it in the classroom, or 

122 



Energy 

B 

abroad gather the harvest of a quiet eye. 
We miss the hiirhest use of the kno\vledi;-e 
science gives if we fail to recognize that 
science itself not only makes it reasonable 
to believe in a Maker, but cries out for 
God, affirms that he is, and that he is 
knowable as other realities are knowable, 
through manifestation. 

The eye notes changes going on in ob- 
jects presented to it, as the action of a 
magnet on fragments of iron, or of one 
magnet on another. Reason at once com- 
pels us to believe in something the eye 
cannot see nor any other sense apprehend, 
a force which is the cause of the observed 
effects. When we advance a little farther 
and find that we are unable even to form 
a mental conception of the nature and 
mode of action of this force we do not for 
that reason give up our belief in its exist- 
ence. W^e hold it by faith, faith founded 
on experience, by an act in which the mind 
lays hold on a truth which it cannot wholly 
comprehend. 

We find that this and other forces oper- 
ating in nature are regular, so by observing 



Ideas from jNlature 



what effects they produce under given 
conditions, we may always secure similar 
effects by reproducing those conditions. 
The study of things sensible enables us to 
apprehend that which lies beyond sense, 
to reach a knowledge of those laws of 
nature to which our lives must conform. 
These laws, each uniting many diverse 
phenomena under one natural cause, en- 
able us to reach that unity which we call 
a science, the limit of this mode of inves- 
tigation : but not the limit of man's power 
to discover truth. 

Reason compels the mind to take a wider 
range, to ask how matter and force came 
to be, how order and law have been estab- 
lished and maintained, what put such valu- 
able helpers within the reach of man and 
gave man power of brain and hand to 
reach and use them ? 

If we begin to question about the origin 
and meaning of the humblest object or 
simplest process in nature, there is found 
no place of rest for the mind until we reach 
an intelligent first Cause, the only suffi- 
cient cause of an intelligible universe. 

124 



Energy 



The man of science who is so ready to 
caution us against the folly of believing 
in uncaused events, should not reprove us 
when we conclude that the order of the 
universe must have a cause. 

That order is so admirable, so manifold, 
so harmonious in its correspondences be- 
tween parts varied and remote ; it answers 
to our intelligence so completely as knowl- 
edge grows ; it shows such evident antici- 
pation of future events, even provision for 
repair of injuries due to accidents that 
may not occur ; it offers so many helps by 
which man may improve his condition, so 
much by which man becomes the fashioner 
of his own life, that we feel compelled to 
attribute to that cause intelligence, power, 
and goodness in the highest degree. 

Nature furnishes a vantage ground from 
which we may see beyond the natural. 
Scientific naturalism furnishes the data 
for rational supernaturaHsm. The facts of 
science are symbols, literally hieroglyphics, 
expressing in human thought that central 
truth which fills the universe with light, 
'^ God is." Religion, which alone sur- 

125 



Ideas from plature 



passes this thought in its supreme revela- 
tion, '^ God is Love," rightly takes the 
being of God for granted. 

"For the invisible things of him since 
the creation of the world are clearly seen, 
being perceived through the things that 
are made, even his everlasting power and 
divinity" (Rom. i : 20). 



126 



IV 
/NATaRAL LAW AMD MIRACLE 



Prove all things; hold Fast that which is good. 

—Paul 



IV 



Science and religion take directly oppo- 
site views of nature. When the student 
of science allows himself to become wholly 
absorbed in his chosen pursuits, he culti- 
vates a habit of mind which may cause him 
to miss truth even more valuable than that 
which he seeks. The Christian, regarding 
things only from the point of view of re- 
ligion, is often sorely perplexed by the 
received doctrines of science, which never- 
theless his reason forbids him to set aside. 
This perplexity is harmful and should be 
removed, if possible, for next to Christi- 
anity science is the world's greatest bene- 
factor. The perplexity is not only harmful, 
it is unnecessary. 

Religion starts with a first cause, God, 
and interprets nature as his . ., 
work. Science begins with le s 
nature, studies its phenom- Jvcit!iii?e 

ena, strives to ''explain" them by referring 
I 129 



Ideas from ]N[ature 



them to natural causes, i, e.^ the conditions 
which uniformly accompany them, and 
gives as the grand result of its investiga- 
tion the conclusion that every event in na- 
ture whose relations it has been able to 
trace is but one link in an unbroken se- 
quence of cause and effect, our modern 
principle of continuity. This conclusion 
is unavoidable ; we all accept it as a cor- 
rect statement of the ordinary course of 
events. 

According to the religious view, the 
lightning is the fire of God, the thunder 
his voice. But what do we mean when we 
say, '' It is so hot to-day, I think there will 
be a thunder shower".? We mean that 
even in this, one of the most mysterious of 
the manifestations of energy in nature, all 
goes on according to exact and unvarying 
laws, as much as in the flowing of a river, 
or the falling of a stone. In fact, we do 
not deem it unwise to provide even our 
churches with lightning rods. 

Now this vision of invariable law may so 

grow upon us as to bewilder us wholly, may 

overshadow our faith in human freedom 

130 



platural Lsly^ and JVIiracle 



and Divine providence. I think that with 
many the difficulty is simply a passing from 
one idea which the intellect enforces to 
another which the heart clings to, with the 
lingering fear that they are not only oppo- 
site, but hostile. To any but those who 
hold religious truth by a marked spiritual 
experience, not past but present, this un- 
certainty is liable to bring an eclipse of 
faith, as it has to many. Christianity 
demands a surrender of the intellect truly, 
but does it require us to stultify reason ? 

Are God and nature then at strife ? 

It will be quite worth while for us to fall 
back on the very simplest considerations, 
on the knowledge gained by experience of 
familiar things, the belief which our un- 
studied speech betrays, to determine for 
ourselves whether these two views, the 
religious and the scientific, are mutually 
exclusive. 

For instance, a strange plant springs up 
in the garden, bears a beautiful flower 
which attracts your attention. You do not 
know how it came there, and are curious to 

131 



Ideas from JNlatiupe 



find out. A child fresh from the story of 
creation in Genesis has an explanation and 
cannot understand your perplexity : ^^ God 
made the plant grow there." That is the 
religious view. 

You know that some seed, or root, or 
cutting capable of producing the plant be- 
came embedded there and has grown up 
through natural causes. You look at the 
child and smile indulgently at the simplicity 
of his faith. Well, that is the scientific 
view, including the smile. 

Yet we also believe that ^^God made." 
Our faith is fixed there, and science author- 
izes that faith. But we believe as well in 
the uniform sequence of cause and effect in 
nature, the general uniformity of its pro- 
cesses. How are we harmonizing these 
two ideas ? Some are keeping them both — 
faith in God is too precious to be parted 
with, that fire will burn is too certain to 
be questioned — and their spiritual life is 
an effort to hold the two apart for fear that 
either will destroy the other. Can they be 
reconciled ? They do not need to be rec- 
onciled ; the religious view of nature and 

132 



JNlatural Law and JVIiracIe 



the scientific view are different views of 
the same thing from opposite sides ; in 
this sense only are they opposite. Do 
not try to hold them apart ; let them meet 
and mingle ; knowledge will be all the 
clearer and faith all the stronger. 

It is indeed true of religion and science, 
as is often said, that each has its own prov- 
ince and methods, and we . 

1 1 HoTfl/' to 

must not try to apply meth- '' 

ods where they are not ap- l^^^^onize 
plicable. They are separate lines of mental 
activity, but they are not parallels whose 
only requirement of each other is that they 
be kept forever apart. They are ordinates 
springing from a common origin in the 
divine. All truth is one and harmonious ; 
whatever is found to be true in one depart- 
ment must supplement truth in every other 
department. God has not called us to 
confusion in the intellectual sphere of our 
being any more than in the emotional. 
We shall soonest end strife between reason 
and faith by giving the verities of both 
their fullest expression, and letting them 
act and react upon each other with all their 

^33 



Ideas from feature 



energy, for so we shall soonest learn how 
much of our difficulty comes from our own 
misconception. 

Watch a printing-press striking off a 
great ''daily." Here it seizes the end of 
a roll of paper, miles long ; there it deliv- 
ers the printed sheet at the rate of many 
thousand copies an hour. Between is a 
bewildering array of revolving cylinders. 
Take up one of the papers and examine it: 
four, eight, perhaps more, pages crowded 
with the latest news of the world, the 
paper cut, printed on both sides, pasted, 
folded. Did the press print the paper ? 
Yes, and no. The press had to be sup- 
plied with power from the engine room. 
Then the press and the engine printed the 
paper ? Again yes, and no. In wondering 
at the '' automatic " machine we are really 
paying a tribute to the genius of its maker ; 
when we watch wheels and levers in mo- 
tion, we see the manifested activity of a 
thinking mind. Mind printed the paper, 
but it was mind using as instruments the 
tools that mind had contrived. We may 
very profitably study the '' evolution of the 

134 



]Nfa1iuraI LolyI and ]V[ipacle 



printing press," going back to the first rude 
hint of its becoming, back to the origin of 
the implements by which its parts were 
fashioned, and thus we shall discover addi- 
tional proof that it is a product of mind. 
Mind planned and started its evolution; 
mind presided over every stage of its un- 
folding. 

Now let us return to the plant in "the 
garden. It sprang from a seed, under the 
conditions of heat, moisture, and darkness. 
These conditions did not make it grow ; 
the seed itself must have possessed a cer- 
tain energy which we call vitality, obtained 
by inheritance. Nor are all these together 
sufficient to explain the growth of the 
plant. These necessary antecedents and 
conditions had to be caused; had to be 
nicely adjusted and co-ordinated before 
that wondrous cycle of growth, from seed 
to the plant bearing seed in itself, could be 
repeated. This is a condition of things 
that could be originated and maintained 
only by an intelligence able to understand 
and fitted to desire what is implied in co- 
ordination, a power capable of securing it. 

135 



Ideas from plature 



What made the plant grow ? The answer 
is inevitable : Mind made it grow. 

If we choose to study the evolution of 
the plant, tracing it back through its varied 
changes, searching through the many gen- 
erations of the past to find the primordial 
germ from which it was derived, it will 
become more and more evident to us that 
the evolution was designed, begun, and car- 
ried out by Supreme Mind. 

So we reach the answer to our question, 
''What made the plant grow.? " from the 

religious side: ''God made 

Jl Double .1 1 . >' -D 4. 

the plant grow. But we 

/inswep ^jgQ reach that answer from 
the side of science. It has pleased the 
Creator to work through instruments, and 
according to a certain order ; matter and 
energy are his instruments, natural laws 
are his methods — orderly because he is 
without variableness and man is dependent. 
We safely rely upon the regularity of na- 
ture, because that is simply to rely upon 
the veracity of the Creator. It is be- 
cause man was made in the image of God 

that he too is able to discover those meth- 

136 



platural LslyI and ]V[iracIe 



ods and use those instruments in his meas- 
ure. 

Science then is the study of methods in 
nature ; that is its province. We investi- 
gate a given event, one will serve for all, 
say the sprouting of a seed. We find that 
certain other events precede or accompany 
this change, and if any one of these is 
wanting the seed will not sprout. We have 
come to call these invariable antecedents, 
uniform conditions, the causes of the sprout- 
ing of the seed. It is found also that in 
general each event in nature is the effect 
of preceding events, and the cause of other 
events that follow. This continuity in the 
succession of events is what makes it possi- 
ble for us to gain some real knowledge of 
the world in which we live, a knowledge 
whose value can scarcely be overrated. Now 
it is clear that these antecedents and con- 
ditions are causes only in a very limited 
sense of the word ; yet, as this is the sense 
in which it is commonly employed, we may 
describe them as proximate causes, second- 
ary causes, or natural causes. This is the 
meaning in which the word cause is used 

137 



Ideas from plature 



in science : evidently it does not reach the 
origin and source of efficiency. 

A philosopher noted the fall of an apple 
and asked its cause. He might have 
given either of two answers, '' God made 
it fall," or " Its fall was due to natural 
causes." While admitting the first as an 
ultimate truth, he recognized the second 
answer as also true, the minister of a glo- 
rious revelation of truth, and following in 
the path it indicated was able to complete 
the long course of investigation resulting 
in the greatest discovery that has ever 
fallen to the lot of man, universal gravita- 
tion. Let us not be puffed up for one 
against the other answer, but clearly ap- 
prehend and frankly acknowledge the truth 
and value of both. 

Religion deals with ultimate cause, and 
makes little account of secondary causes ; 
hence the direct language of the Bible in 

accounting for an event : God made " 

Science cannot reach ultimate cause at all ; 
that is beyond its realm. It studies nature 
as it appears, discovers the order of events 
in nature, makes known natural causes, 

138 



platural LaTAr and JYIiracIe 



but in so doing strengthens the demand of 
reason for a spiritual first cause. 

So, when we ask the cause of the growth 
of a plant, or any other process in nature, 
the question is two-fold and the answer is 
two-fold also. '' It is proximately due to 
the action of natural causes, ultimately due 
to the will of God, whose instruments 
natural causes are." 

Yet, you may ask, are not these uniform 
methods after all methods of the inevitable, 
that make it reasonable to 
believe in a Supreme Ruler ^ 
and Maker but forbid belief I^s^i^^^Is 
in man's freedom. Divine providence, the 
efficacy of prayer } Do they not show the 
impossibility of those miracles which the 
Gospels attribute to Christ, works so inter- 
woven with his teachings that if we lose 
faith in the one, we shall soon find our- 
selves bereft of the guidance and consolation 
of the other, and so lose the best thing life 
has to offer ? 

The freedom of the human will involves 
a problem that yet awaits solution. Hid- 
den in the deeps of personality, the will 

139 



Ideas from plature 



lies too close to us, too near the central 
mystery of our being, for us to scrutinize 
it. In its operations as in its essence it is 
no doubt a riddle too hard for man to read. 
The testimony of consciousness that we 
are free to choose, and the sense of respon- 
sibility for our own actions which we can- 
not shake off, assure us that *^ Our wills 
are ours," but when we come to inquire 
further concerning the nature and origin 
of that dynamic expression of character 
which we call an act of the will, we are 
compelled to add, '^ We know not how."^ 

It is evident that our relations with na- 
ture confirm this innate belief in our free- 
dom ; though we are limited by conditions 
and greatly influenced by surroundings, 
heredity and environment are not all that 
make us what we are. The last considera- 
tion that turns the scale, that decides for 
this rather than that, is our own choice, 
the manifestation of our own individuality, 
as we have molded it by our own acts. 

But, it may be objected, man is himself 
a part of nature and therefore bound. 

^ ** In Memoriam," I. 4. 
140 



platupal Law and JVEiracIe 



When we give the term nature its widest 
application it includes all existence except 
the Creator; man then, is a part of na- 
ture, subject to its laws. 

But man, a soul, finite and dependent, 
yet a soul, stands above material nature, 
including his bodily share of it; in this 
relation he is himself a cause — a super- 
natural cause. One reason why we so 
often draw false inferences from a knowl- 
edge of the resistless forces and unvarying 
laws of nature, is because we do not rightly 
estimate the familiar fact that man can 
interfere with the workings of nature. 
Man is set over nature ; he not only uses 
its materials, but he can act with its laws 
and determine their operation so as to pro- 
duce results which would not have been 
without his self-determined activity. Does 
he shrink from the winter's cold ? He en- 
closes a portion of space and produces in 
it a summer temperature. Is his arm too 
feeble for its tasks ? See him harness the 
flowing river and bid it grind his corn, 
draw his carriage, turn night into day in 

his streets and dwellings. 

141 



Ideas from JNlature 



The laws of nature are not fetters to 
bind us; from them are wrought the in- 
struments of our power. We learn their 
modes of action, act with them, and cause 
new effects. The hand is puny ; gravita- 
tion enables it to give the blow of the trip- 
hammer. The eye is feeble ; a knowledge 
of the laws of light imparts to it the de- 
fining and space-piercing power of the 
microscope and the telescope. 

It is not necessary that laws of nature 
should be set aside or ^^ violated" in order 
that a new thing may arise quite outside 
the regular operation of natural causes ; it 
is only necessary that an intelligent agent 
should employ those laws. Standing at 
rest, the arm naturally gravitates to the 
side, but you can raise it, overcoming 
gravitation. The mind, active as will, ex- 
ercises a control over the muscles, and the 
operation of one force is modified by an- 
other. A man falls, stunned, between the 
rails before an advancing train. He is 
powerless ; gravitation holds him ; the 
train, too near to be stopped, will cer- 
tainly crush him. But no, a bystander 

142 



JNlatural Law and JYEiracIe 



rushes in and drags him from before the 
wheels. Where man is so evidently free 
it would be absurd to contend that God is 
limited. 

We come then to inquire how this view 
of the meaning of natural law affects be- 
lief in Christian miracles/ 
acts of divine power in hu- M^^Oiincls or 
man history quite outside ^ 
the action of that power in what we call 
the ordinary course of nature. 

I. Miracle is not impossible. Only an 
atheist can consistently maintain that 
miracle is impossible ; his inconsistency 
with nature lies in his being an atheist. 
The agnostic freely admits, '' I urge no 
claim of impossibility "; while that crude 
view which regards the universe as a 
gigantic machine, started ages ago, whose 
maker sits idly or helplessly apart and sees 
it go, makes no claim on intelligence. 

No objection can be raised against mira- 
cle on account of the greatness of the 
work it implies. Creation and the orderly 

^ I refer to the miracles of Christ for the sake of brev- 
ity, and because the whole question centers in them. 

143 



Ideas from JNlature 



processes of nature are at least as wonder- 
ful in themselves as any miracle recorded 
in the Bible. Through day and night 
continuously, the heavens repeat their 
silent declaration of the being and rule of 
God ; ^ but they could not bear immediate 
witness to the truth of a special revelation 
from God. We can think of nothing so 
fitting for this as the works recorded of 
Christ. 

There is no force to the objection that 
miracles are contrary to experience, for no 
one is able to say that they are contrary 
to the experience of all mankind. The 
miracles of the Bible are comparatively 
few in number, so they are contrary to the 
experience of the majority, but this econ- 
omy of miracle argues strongly in favor of 
the reasonableness of a belief in its use. 

2. A world governed according to law is 
necessary for miracle. It is only in an or- 
dered world that the miraculous could be 
employed with significance. The general 
uniformity, instead of rendering the spe- 

1 Ps. 8 : 19 ; 65 : 104 ; 139 : 148 ; Isa. 40 : 12-31 ; 
Job 38-41, etc. 

144 



platural La^ and JVEiracIe 



cial exception impossible, supplies a pre- 
requisite for it. If miracles were ** liable 
to happen," or could be served up fresh on 
call, as some philosophers appear to de- 
mand, the event would have no value as a 
divine sign. 

3. A miracle is not necessarily a viola- 
tion of a law of nature. It cannot be 
maintained that a miracle is a violation of 
a law of nature, and therefore impossible. 
So Hume defined it ; but Huxley does not 
hesitate to point out his error : '^ The defi- 
nition of a miracle as a violation of the 
laws of nature is in reality an employment 
of language which, in the face of the mat- 
ter, cannot be justified." ^ 

We have experience of only a small por- 
tion of universal nature ; we know a few of 
its laws, and of these our knowledge is but 
rudimentary. What appears to us excep- 
tional action may be a part of the Creator's 
plan, a law of the universe as a whole, as 
truly as the regularity which we daily ex- 
perience is his ordinary method of govern- 
ment in that small fraction of the universe 

1 Huxley's '*Hume," p. 129. 
K 145 



Ideas from JNlature 



which is the school of our earthly life, and 
in which it has pleased him to limit his or- 
dinary action to these uniform methods so 
that it may be a fit school. 

Bishop Butler says : ** And from hence 
it must follow that persons' notion of what 
is natural will be enlarged in proportion to 
their greater knowledge of the works of 
God, and the dispensations of his providence. 
Nor is there any absurdity in supposing 
that there may be beings in the universe 
whose capacities and knowledge and views 
may be so extensive as that the whole 
Christian dispensation may to them appear 
natural, i, e.^ analogous or conformable to 
God's dealings with other parts of his cre- 
ation ; as natural as the visible known 
course of things appears to us." ^ 

Much difficulty is removed when we 
clearly apprehend this fact that Christian 
miracles, events quite outside the known 
laws of our world, may yet be in perfect 
harmony with the unknown laws of the 
universe of which our world forms so small 
a fraction. 

1 ** Analogy," p. 46, Glad. ed. 
146 



platural Law and ]V[ipacle 



It is equally important to remember that 
miracles cannot be brought within the do- 
main of natural law, in the restricted 
sense in which that term is always used in 
exact science, and generally in common 
language ; for so it means the laws of na- 
ture of which we have experience. It is 
the very essence of miracle that it is an 
unusual act of the Creator within the 
sphere of human observation as the '' na- 
tural event " is his usual act. They have 
the same Cause ; they are equally wonder- 
ful in themselves ; they differ in method. 

4. The improbability of miracle bears in 
its favor as well as against it. Miracle is not 
impossible, but it is improb- 
able ; here lies the difficulty N^^^^^^^ 
it presents. The believer in Ws^cinaea 
Christianity is the one who should realize 
this to the full, for he not only believes 
that miracles have been performed at vari- 
ous critical periods in a long course of re- 
lated events culminating in the mission of 
Jesus Christ, but he practically sets aside 
other events claiming to be miraculous as 
not sustained by sufficient evidence. 

147 



Ideas from JNlature 



What sufficient evidence have we for 
believing that those inherently improbable 
** works," '^ signs," miracles^ — to use the 
term most familiar to us — narrated in the 
Gospels were really performed by Christ. 
It is easily seen that if we admit their 
genuineness it is their improbability, that 
is, their unlikeness to ordinary events, 
which enforces the conclusion of Nicode- 
mus that they were wrought by the power 
of God, accrediting the claims of him who 
did them.^ But how do we meet this im- 
probability in the full light of knowledge 
that has swept away all belief in magic, 
witchcraft, and the like ? 

5 . The character of the being who wrought 
miracles and the doctrines they accompanied 

^This term has now a settled meaning in discussions 
like the present, but it is perhaps unfortunate in 
emphasizing unduly the strangeness of the event it is 
used to denote. The words employed by the writers of 
the Gospels — sign and power by the Synoptists, sign and 
work by John — call attention chiefly to the significance 
of the display of Divine power, as the appropriate work 
of a Divine Being. 

2 John 3:2. See also the reasoning of the blind 
man restored to sight (9 : 30-33) ; and the Lord's reply 
to the messengers of the Baptist (Matt. 11 : 4-6). 

148 



JNlatupal Law and JVIiracIe 



supply an answer. There is one view, clearly 
defined and commanding, which presents 
evidence so strong, so self-consistent and 
appropriate, that it at once becomes more 
reasonable to believe that the miraculous 
events did take place than that the records 
are untrue. It is the view that accepts 
the declaration which Jesus made of him- 
self, that he was one with the Father. 

Consider how reasonable the Christian 
scheme becomes when viewed in this light. 
On the one side are seen the power and 
love of God ; on the other the helpless 
misery and guilt of man, dwelt on by many 
historians, by none more vividly portrayed 
than by Paul in the opening passages of 
the Epistle to the Romans. In the fullness 
of time the Redeemer came. He gathered 
up in living words all spiritual truth uttered 
by sage or seer in times past, revealed all 
truth needed for time to come. That men 
might know ^ that the Son of Man hath 
power on earth to forgive sins, he showed 
openly and plainly before their eyes the 
unmistakable evidences of divine power in 



1 Matt. 9 : 2-8. 
149 



Ideas from ]Nlatiii?e 



the miracles he performed. For sacrifice 
he offered himself — an exhibition of love to 
win love ; for proof of his divine mission to 
the ages to come, a proof growing stronger 
as the ages pass, he chose that transforma- 
tion he effects in the souls of all who re- 
ceive him. 

His three years of public ministry have 
changed the whole outlook of human life 
from despair to hope, have modified the 
whole course of human history. It is a 
body of evidence too strong in its charac- 
ter, too harmonious in its relations to be 
set aside. Christianity as Christ taught it, 
as Paul understood it, is too good, too great 
not to be true. 

6. The occasion demanded the miracles. 
It is often urged that the excellence of 
Christian doctrine is sufficient evidence of 
its divine origin. So it is after it is in the 
world and men have understood and ac- 
cepted it ; but those who first listened to 
Jesus did not have this evidence. To 
them he would be merely one more claim- 
ant to the Messiahship ; it would have been 
mockery indeed not to have given them 

ISO 



]\[atiipal LaiAT and JVIiracle 



the signs which alone could be to them 
infallible proofs of the validity of his claim. 
Human envy and hate would allow him 
only a few years in which to accomplish 
his public work. In that short time he 
must attract the multitudes to himself, win 
honest and thoughtful men who could be- 
come competent witnesses, and make it 
possible for them to believe in him and 
admit the extraordinary claims he made, 
despite general rejection and apparent over- 
throw. The miracles of Christ performed 
this service ; it is impossible to think of 
anything else that could have done it. 

I say that miracle was duly wrought 
When, save for it, no faith was possible. 



So faith grew, making void more miracles 
Because too much : they would compel, not help.^ 

We, looking back across the centuries, 
recognize the fitness of these divine signs 
to attract, to inspire confidence, and to 
render belief possible to the first hearers 
of the word. We do not wish that they 
might be expunged, we do not want them 

^ Browning, '* A Death in the Desert.'' 



Ideas from plature 



explained away ; their presence in the rec- 
ord is a help, their absence would create a 
difficulty hard to overcome. 

All seeming impossibility is removed 
from Christian miracles by restoring God 
to nature ; all improbability vanishes when 
we accept Jesus Christ as God manifest in 
the flesh. 

But the value of evidence is dependent 
on the spiritual position of him who exam- 
ines it. To those who assign to Jesus a 
lower place, this strong evidence for his 
miracles — the inherent reasonableness of 
belief in them, because recognizing the 
occasion as demanding them — is wtoting. 
For them the improbability must retain 
great force ; and as their respect for the 
grand personality of the Great Teacher 
rises, the want of harmony between their 
conception of him and the only record of 
him which we possess must often occasion 
grave unrest. Modern rationalism, mas- 
querading in the vestments of Christianity, 
cannot be expected to regard belief in the 
miraculous with anything more than indul- 
gent pity. 

152 



ylatural Laisr and ]V[ipacle 



7. The contrast between Christianity with 
and without its miraculous elements is itself 

decisive. We may not re- 

nffsct on 
peat the experience of a Nico- 

demus or a Thomas ; but K^J-igiOn 
there is one test which has immense sig- 
nificance for us in these days. 

When Christianity is accepted as a mi- 
raculous revelation from God it is strong ; 
as soon as it comes to be viewed as merely 
an incident in evolution, a product of de- 
veloping humanity, its power begins to 
wane. Yet the moral beauty of its teach- 
ings remains the same in both cases. Why 
is it that in the first case the gospel wins 
the heroic devotion of some and arouses 
the fierce opposition of others, while in the 
second case its opponents deem it scarcely 
worth attacking and its adherents begin to 
doubt whether it is worth the cost of 
preaching it to every creature t It is be- 
cause Christianity, divested of its miracu- 
lous elements, is like a body separated from 
the soul that had energized it. 

Unwavering faith in the word as a direct 
revelation from God was what inspired its 

153 



Ideas from J^ature 



early ministers and secured the surprising 
triumphs of the first centuries, while it 
was yet too obscure to win the selfish pat- 
ronage of ambitious rulers. A like faith 
has attended every great religious awaken- 
ing. It inspired the heroes of the Ref- 
ormation and enabled Wesley to startle 
Christendom out of the slumber of formal- 
ism. Down to the present time — even if 
it is true, as some of its critics declare, 
that miraculous Christianity does not enjoy 
the full favor of the world — it is doing the 
best work that is being done for the world. ^ 
It is easy to see why opponents of Chris- 
tianity have striven so persistently to un- 
dermine this citadel of its strength, but 
difficult indeed to understand why any of 
its true friends should think the time has 
come for its surrender. 

There is nothing in natural science to 

1 Gladstone says, in his Glasgow address : ''Chris- 
tianity, even in its sadly imperfect development is, as a 
matter of fact, at the head of the world." And again: 
' ' For the last fifteen hundred years Christianity has 
always marched at the head of all human improvement 
and civilization, and it has harnessed to its car all that 
is great and glorious in humanity." 

154 



rlatural LslyI and ]V[ipacle 



make that surrender imperative. No truth 
of science, no well-established principle, no 
consistent theory, is fatal to a belief in 
Christian miracles. One may define evo- 
lution as the only and universal method of 
divine activity, and infer that this defini- 
tion excludes miracle. Very good ! But 
the definition rests on an assumption for 
which science affords no basis. The re- 
sults obtained by those who are now at 
work on the problems of biology show 
plainly that if evolution can rightly be 
called a universal process, as we speak of 
universal gravitation, it can by no means 
be claimed to be the only process operating 
in the world. 

Evolution gives no explanation of the 
cause of variation, nor of the preparation 
for evolution, which has brought it about 
that things and environment act and react 
upon each other in such very different 
ways as we see them doing. Side by side 
with evolution march degradation and 
destruction. In fact, if we are to be 
shut up to Darwinism, destruction is the 
rule, development the exception ; the vast 

155 



Ideas from ]\[atiupe 



multitudes of living beings are cast as 
rubbish to the void. Exact science is very 
distinctly calling for pause in the extrava- 
gant worship paid to evolution as a fetich 
by enthusiastic devotees who use the name 
of science as their warrant. 

The truth is this : we are only at the 
beginning of a theory of evolution. One 
attempt has been made to apply what we 
have to answer one question, and that a 
lesser one, about the origin of species, 
how^ a variation may be preserved after it 
has been produced. In the estimation of 
masters in science like Huxley, Romanes, 
and others, all ardent evolutionists, the 
answer given is not yet perfectly satisfac- 
tory. 

The evolutionary process, as we fashion 
it in our imaginations, is a magnificent 
one, and, to use the best knowledge and 
thought we possess, it seems worthy of 
God ; but we must not therefore think of 
God as bound helplessly to this one pro- 
cess, like Ixion to his wheel, as some ar- 
dent advocates of evolution appear to rep- 
resent him. This is to put evolution first 

156 



]\[atiupal Law and JVIiracle 



and God second. Men who are not quite 
prepared to banish God from the world are 
wiUing to let him serve under evolution. 
He may act, if indeed he has any will to 
act, but he must act strictly in accordance 
with that philosophic notion called evolu- 
tion or they will refuse to believe in his 
activity. All this is tending back again to 
non-Christian philosophies that place blind 
necessity or intellectual abstractions void 
of intellect at the summit of being. It is 
fraud to call such doctrines either modern 
or scientific. 

On the contrary, the thoughtful study 
of nature tends to confirm our belief in a 
Maker who cares, desires, plans, does, and 
therefore is the Perfect One. He may 
even, if occasion arise, do a new thing, 
^^ leave the ninety and nine in the wilder- 
ness, and go after that which is lost, until 
he find it." 

If there had been no violation of law, 
evolution might, perhaps, have been suffi- 
cient to secure an upward tendency, a 
harmonious progress ; but since voluntary 
transgression has made corruption and 

157 



Ideas from ]N[atupe 



misery common facts of human life, more 
is called for. And there is more : man's sin 
became the occasion of God's miracle of 
redeeming grace. 

Granting that there has been evolution 
in the unfolding of the scheme of the 
universe in time and space, it does not 
follow that there has not also been mira- 
cle. God fulfills himself in many ways, 
and no one is qualified to declare that the 
creative activity of the Self-existent in 
universal nature has been limited to those 
methods of which we have daily experi- 
ence in the ordinary course of events in 
that minute fraction of the universe which 
is '* nature '' to us. 

8. Science accepts one miracle, creation. 
When we inquire about the origin of mat- 
ter and energ^y, of life and 

First of ^11 . . n . , 

^ mmd, we are compelled to 

refer to creative acts other than those 

with which we are made familiar by what 

is seen of the operation of *' natural 

causes." ^ Science recognizes the reality 

1 This remains true, whether we regard our universe 
as the earhest cosmos or not. 

158 



platural Law and JVIiracIe 



of the time-world as the groundwork of 
its conclusions ; it thereby accepts the 
miracle of creation. Evolution does not 
attempt to account for the origin of na- 
ture ; that lies quite beyond its scope, and 
must be viewed as the direct act of God. 
The new creation of the human soul, the 
central event of human history, may fitly 
be classed with it. Both nature and Chris- 
tianity exhibit in their unf oldings this ** fa- 
vorite method" of the Creator, the method 
of growth, evolution ; but the grain of 
mustard seed must first exist with its po- 
tentialities and harmonious environment 
before its growth can illustrate the nature 
of the kingdom of heaven. Without the 
miracle of creation nature would not exist ; 
but for the miracle of revelation there 
would be no Christian religion. 

That inevitable tendency of human 
thought toward unity in its search for 
cause, is not satisfied by evolution. For 
a time the grandeur of the conception 
overawes, but closer inspection shows that, 
grand as it is, it is not original, but de- 
rived, and must take its place among 

159 



Ideas from platiure 



things secondary. Unity of cause is 
found only in the will of God. There is 
then but one question regarding Christian 
miracles, and each of us must decide it in 
his own heart. Have we good reasons 
for believing that it has pleased God to 
make known the way of life through One 
who came down from heaven ? 

Under the stress of material things, 
when nothing seems real but the busy 
concerns of this earthly life, when belief 
in God has grown feeble, we may hesitate 
to give an affirmative answer. When the 
vital power of Christianity, accepted as it 
is taught in the New Testament, taken in 
its simple grammatical meaning, is experi- 
enced in the soul or even honestly esti- 
mated in history, doubt vanishes and reason 
is satisfied that God has so willed. And 
nothing forbids, not nature, nor the lapse 
of centuries, nor the limitations of human 
testimony. 

For us the doctrines justify the mira- 
cles. The gospel, with its miraculous ele- 
ments, is the power of God unto salvation 

to every one that believeth ; without them 

i6o 



plalmral Laifl/" and JVEiracle 



it may become the rule of formalism, the 
forerunner of indifferentism. The former 
startles the world with the declaration, ** If 
ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in 
your sins '^ ; ^ the other soothes with that 
older text, more flattering but always mis- 
leading, ^* Ye shall not surely die." 

Herbert Spencer has lately finished his 
great work on '' Synthetic Philosophy," 
begun many years ago. In the division 
treating of religion he says : ^* But one 
truth must grow ever clearer — the truth 
that there is an inscrutable existence every- 
where manifested, to which he (the thought- 
ful observer) can neither find nor conceive 
either beginning or end. Amid the mys- 
teries which become the more mysterious 
the more they are thought about, there will 
remain the one absolute certainty — that 
he is ever in presence of an infinite and 
eternal energy from which all things pro- 
ceed." 

Thus philosophy, following the lead of 

^ John 8 : 24. Evidently John would not agree with 
the modern teachers, who assure us that Jesus laid 
very little stress on belief. 

L 161 



Ideas from J^aturs 



science, finds everywhere behind the phe- 
nomena of nature indica- 
P 5^ ^ tions of a supernatural Cause 
which it is yet unable ade- 
quately to make known. So if man is to 
have definite knowledge of his Creator it 
must be through a miraculous revelation. 

Christianity recognizes in this *^ infinite 
and eternal energy " of the philosopher the 
one living and true God whom the Bible 
reveals, and addresses to the modern ag- 
nostic the words of Paul to the devotees 
of the unknown God at Athens, '^Whom 
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him de- 
clare I unto you.'' 

And what of the Christian's faith in the 
efficacy of prayer, his trust in Providence } 
The farmer plows his field, turning down 
the sward to decay in the darkness. He 
prepares the soil, sows and covers the 
seed. What does he expect that he thus 
buries the grain, which might have become 
food for man, and leaves it to die in the 
ground } Does he hope by his puny ef- 
forts to interrupt the continuity of cause 

and effect, to set aside the laws of nature } 

162 



r^atupal Law and JVEiracIe 



No, he does not expect to set aside the 
laws of nature ; he has probably never 
even heard of determinism ; but experi- 
ence has given him a robust faith in the 
human will as one of the causes that de- 
termine. 

His act is a sublime expression of faith 
in those unvarying laws as the instruments 
through which his labor may secure a real 
good which without that labor would never 
have come to him. The result justifies 
his reliance when the harvest brings to 
him, in manifold returns, seed for the 
sower and bread for the eater. Just as 
wise and just as scientific is our belief 
that the laws of man's spiritual being af- 
ford avenues through which our strivings 
after God and efforts to do his will can 
bring to us returns quite as real as the 
fruits of the cultivated field, and far more 
precious and enduring than they. 



163 



V 

MATURE A MAM I F EST AT I OM 
OF GOD 



Call my works thy friends 

At nature dost thou shrink amazed? 

God is it who transcends. 

— Browning 



V 



While we recognize that in this universe 
of things governed by mind the beHef in 
natural law is not hostile to a belief in 
Christian miracles, we must not forget that 
the familiar processes of nature are also 
witnesses to God's being and government, 
in one way more urgent, because they are 
repeated continuously day after day before 
our waking sense. They cannot be ex- 
plained until they are referred to him as 
their cause, and being referred to him as 
their cause they are voices that speak to 
us of him. I mean that the flowing of the 
river, and the streaming currents that are 
making green once more the blades of 
grass on field and lawn, the unfolding buds 
on the trees, and the opening flowers of 
woodland and meadow, have a message to 
deliver to us from God, if only we have ears 
to hear. 

There may be sometimes an undue ten- 
167 



Ideas from ]Nlatiire 



dency on the part of the religious teacher 
to employ unusual occurrences whose con- 
ditions are unknown to us — the tempest, 
the flood, the earthquake — as proofs of 
the reality of God's government in na- 
ture. I know that the perplexity of an 
inquirer is often increased in this way ; for 
he cannot but reason that as all the events 
we can adequately investigate are found to 
depend on natural causes, so the mystery of 
these rarer occurrences would be removed 
if we could only trace their antecedents. 
All this perplexity is removed for him 
when he is brought to set himself face to 
face with the fact that the same "mystery'' 
is present in the simplest and most ordi- 
nary event in nature, as truly as in the 
most uncommon and stupendous. We 
have no adequate explanation for the fall- 
ing of a stone until we clearly understand 
that it is not produced by natural causes, 
but by the power of God acting through 
natural causes ; and the same explanation 
is equally adequate to account for the 
crumpling and rending of the earth beneath 

our feet, or the stately march of the con- 

i68 



J^ature a JVIanifesta^ion of Qod 

stellations above our heads. All natural 
events are equally mysterious 
in this sense. A master in ^ ^ f 
science tells us that the evo- 
lution of the universe is not more nor less 
difficult to understand than the evolution 
of a bird from the egg. If you are inclined 
to regard that as touched with the exagger- 
ation of the specialist, listen to this : 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies ; — 

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower; but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. ^ 

Then such representations as are in the 
one hundred and fourth Psalm, in the clos- 
ing chapters of Job, in the words of the 
Master about the sparrows, are not merely 
allowable as poetry but are true to science. 

The sum is this : nature cannot account 
for itself. It refers us for an explanation 
to something above nature ; that is what 
we mean when we speak of the demand of 
reason for a belief in the supernatural. 

^ Tennyson. 
169 



Ideas from plature 



We may refuse to lift up our eyes and 
ask, ^* Who hath created these things?" 
but this is blank unreason, an exaggeration 
of agnosticism. If we do ask the cause of 
even the simplest process in nature, there 
is no place to pause along the whole line 
of inquiry until we reach an infinite First 
Cause. 

The orderly processes of nature, the man- 
ifold relations of its many parts, all acting 
in harmony as the tides obey the moon, 
proclaim that this universal frame was 
planned, is the working out of a grand de- 
sign. Design implies self-conscious thought, 
personality; the infinite First Cause is a 
personal God. 

It follows then that this world in which 

we live, this realm of the natural that 

spreads out before our eyes, and answers 

to our touch ; this world of secondary 

causes, conditions, relations, effects, only 

acquires its full dignity in the estimation of 

the Christian. He, of all men, will be most 

anxious to read its lessons aright, will be 

most ready to accept the truth it declares. 

He may not affect to look down upon 

170 



plature a JVIanifestation of Qod 

material things, when he recognizes matter 
and mechanism as the handiwork of the 
God whom he worships. 

The discoveries of science have not 
tended to remove the mystery of causation 
in nature, or to cast doubt on the declara- 
tion of religion, which refers it to the will 
of God. But science has done much to 
increase our knowledge of the processes 
that go on in nature, and for these there is 
a marked tendency to assign what may be 
called mechanical explanations, that is, 
explanations involving mechanical, physi- 
cal, or chemical operations. It is not easy 
to understand why many good men seem 
to regard this tendency with apprehension. 

The structure of the human arm, the uses 
of food, the exhaustion of brain that fol- 
lows long-continued mental activity, show 
us that the Creator is not averse to using 
mechanical and physical and chemical 
operations. Mechanical processes may 
well be co-extensive with the material uni- 
verse and play their fitting part in the 
changes that go on in the living cell. 

These are matters for investigation to de- 

171 



Ideas from JNlature 



cide, and we may confidently hope that 
they may be decided in the affirmative, for 
such an answer would substitute knowledge 
for ignorance. 

But what is mechanism ? Contrivance 
for the successful application of force to 
the accomplishment of a desired end. 
There still remain the questions : Who 
desired the ends we see accomplished in 
nature ? Who originated the contrivances ? 
Who supplies and directs the energy nec- 
essary for working them ? For these 
questions there is evidently but one an- 
swer; but science — rightly — does not at- 
tempt to answer them ; its part is to set 
them before us in their full force and 
integrity. 

The votary of religion must learn how 
widely mechanical contrivances prevail in 
nature, and must welcome them as the signs 
by which intelligence recognizes intelli- 
gence and determines the method of its 
working. He will then be prepared to 
point out to the devotee of physical science 
the sheer unreason of maintaining that 

nature reveals nothing but mechanism. 

172 



]\Iatiipe a JVIanifestation of Qod 

For the mistake of naturalism ^ is not so 
much that it declares the cosmos to be 
mechanical, from the point of view of 
science, as that it declines to go on and 
acknowledge frankly that mechanism im- 
plies plan on the part of some self-con- 
scious being. 

There is no antagonism between the 
view that regards nature as ordered through 
mechanism, and that which affirms it to be 
governed by Divine Will. Spencer may 
be substantially correct in his general con- 
ception of the world-process, evolution, the 
method of growth ; and also his greater 
contemporary Browning may be wholly 
right in his solution of the world-problem 
which Spencer relegates to the unknow- 
able : 

The world, 
The beauty and the wonder and the power, 
. . . and God made it all ! 

We may with perfect consistency hold 

^ Naturalism, the term used by Balfour, and others, 
to include all creeds founded on the doctrine that we 
can know only phenomena and their laws. — '* Founda- 
tions of Belief^'''' pp. 6, 7, 9^, etc. 



Ideas from JNlature 



that the history of our world and its inhab- 
itants is in its general course 

Causation and , ^. , u^. u .. 

an evolution, brought about 

peemmg through natural causes, and 
at the same time recognize it as the gradual 
unfolding of a Divine plan. 

It is wholly reasonable to believe that if 
an intelligence of the highest human order 
could have watched the process of creation 
from the beginning, seeing only as we now 
see, from the outside, there would have 
appeared to him no breach of continuity. 

Light is called out of darkness ; but our 
observer hears no creative fiat any more 
than we do when we watch the morning 
dawn above the Eastern hills. Things be- 
fore unseen take shape beneath his gaze ; 
so we see the great cumulus clouds become 
visible as the heated air of summer streams 
upward into colder space. New wonders 
arise ; but so they do to one who from 
childhood has watched the almost change- 
less growth of the so-called century plant, 
and at last in old age sees it suddenly send 
up its tall scape and unfold its blossoms 
for the first time. 

174 



ylature a ]VIaiiifestatioii of Qod 

Even if our imagined observer were for- 
tunate enough to be present at the first 
mysterious union of the great four ele- 
ments, to record the origin of protoplasm, 
to hail the advent of the first living germ, 
and watch its progressive development, he 
could trace changes, more manifold truly, 
but not in kind different from those we see 
when we study the evolution of a bird from 
the egg. 

He would have a view of nature, only; 
he would see processes continuous, suc- 
cessive, natural. He could not point to 
any part and say, *' This is not natural." 

To rest here is to be content with natu- 
ralism, materialism ; but reason forbids man 
to rest here, refuses to rest anywhere short 
of the Author of all this harmony. 

To a higher intelligence, watching crea- 
tion from the other side, all wonder at the 
multiform unfoldings of the mighty plan 
would be adoration of the Creator's power 
and wisdom. Whether that which now is 
had existence at once by the creative word, 
or was evolved through long ages, the only 
language that could convey the truth fitly 

175 



Ideas from JNfature 



to primitive man, the only language that 
can convey it fully to us is, ^* God created," 
^* God fashioned." 

He originated ; he maintains. His 
thought is energy ; his will is cause and 
gives efficiency to that mysterious nexus 
that makes one event the antecedent or 
consequent of another. That continuity 
of cause and effect which science declares 
to be the rule of nature is simply the con- 
tinuity of Divine activity. Science hopes 
to discover a unity of origin for the differ- 
ent forms of energy : religion finds it in 
the will of God acting with purpose. 

Sometimes the believer in the Bible ob- 
jects to this close association of things 
natural with things divine, and warns back 
any one who would bring from the study 
of nature a proof of God's existence, a 
witness to his attributes. But here the 
Bible itself is against him. At its very 
opening it claims nature as the workman- 
ship of God. In the writings of prophet 
and psalmist, in the teachings of our Lord 
and his apostles, lessons to strengthen faith 

are drawn from these visible surroundings. 

176 



pJature a ]VIanifestation of Qod 

Indeed the only argument used in the 
Bible to show the certainty of God's exist- 
ence is the argument from intelligent de- 
sign in nature. 

If the Christian of these latter days had 
made himself familiar with his Bible, if he 
had entered into the spirit of the sacred 
writings, he would have discovered that 
everywhere in them nature is recognized 
as the creature of God, all things are his 
servants, — '^ fire and hail, snow and vapor ; 
stormy wind, fulfilling his w^ord," ^ — and 
the good man would not have been so badly 
terrified, though he might have been sur- 
prised, to learn that as knowledge advances 
natural events are found to be connected 
by natural causes, and nature thus shown, 
more and more certainly, to be the harmo- 
nious thought of one mind ; and he could 
scarcely fail to see with delight to how 
great an extent that mind was made acces- 
sible to the mind of man through self- 
manifestation in the continuous and orderly 
activities of nature. 

Neither would he have been scared by 

i Ps. 148. 
M 177 



Ideas from JNlature 



the growing probability of a new theory of 
the origin of species ^ into hiding away his 
belief in design, or in wrapping it in apolo- 
getic terms borrowed from philosophy, to 
escape the scoff of the unthinking or the 
indulgent smile of the scientific. 

Nothing has transpired to make the 
present relations of man and nature expli- 
cable on any other view than as a designed 
END. We may therefore rest assured that 
he who designed the end designed the 
means, and though we cannot always see 
where things remote find their place in the 
great scheme, or that possibly every means 
is an end in itself, some failure in this 
direction may reasonably be set down to 
the fact that the human mind is not infi- 
nite. 

1 The acute champion of teleology, Paley, saw no 
difficulty in admitting that the " production of things " 
may be the result of trains of mechanical dispositions 
fixed beforehand by intelligent appointment and kept in 
action by a power at the center — that is to say, he pro- 
leptically accepted the modern doctrine of evolution ; 
and his successors might do well to follow their leader, 
or at any rate to attend to his weighty reasonings before 
rushing into an antagonism which has no reasonable 
foundation. — Huxley^ ''''Life of Darwin ^'^^ Vol. I., p. S55' 

178 



jlature a ]VIanifestation of Qod 

Let us not fear to bring out the good old 
argument — this argument from design in 
nature : of all external evidences for the 
being of a wise and good God, it presents 
the strongest, the clearest, the most avail- 
able, and the most satisfactory to sound 
reason. It alone furnishes an explanation 
of the cosmos worthy its existence. 

The pantheist looks upon the sum of 
things natural and calls it God, only a 
more poetic form of the grosser ^^no God." 
Christianity makes known the living God, 
in whom all things consist, manifested in 
nature and supreme over nature. 

Tennyson has well expressed for us this 
Christian view of nature as a visible mani- 
festation of the invisible Spirit in his 
" Higher Pantheism," which means some- 
thing higher than pantheism. In matters 
wherein touch so palpably exceeds grasp 
the poet is often our best helper : 

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM. 

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, 

and the plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of him who 

reigns ? 

179 



Ideas from plature 



Is not the vision he ? tho' he be not that which he 

seems ? 
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not 

live in dreams ? 

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and 

limb. 
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from 

him ? 

Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason 

why ; 
For is he not all but thou, that has power to feel 

*'I am I!" 

Glory about thee, without thee : and thou fulfillest 

thy doom, 
Making him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor 

and gloom. 

Speak to him thou, for he hears, and Spirit with 

spirit can meet — 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands 

and feet. 

God is law, say the wise, O Soul, and let us re- 
joice. 

For if he thunder by law the thunder is yet his 
voice. 

Law is God, say some; no God at all says the 

fool; 
For all we have power to see is a straight staff 

bent in a pool ; 
i8o 



rlatupe a ]V[anifestation of Qod 

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of 

man cannot see ; 
But if we could see and hear, this vision — were it 

not he ? 

Our Lord bade us consider the lilies 
how they grow ; for one who obeys his in- 
junction there are thousands who merely 
consider the beauty of the saying. Per- 
haps this is one reason why the divine 
warning against worry is so little heeded. 

There is an objection in many minds to 
this humble mode of learning from common 
things, a mental attitude perhaps rather 
than an uttered thought, which may be 
expressed in this way : " These sensible 
things are mere phenomena, appearances, 
the changing aspects of the material and 
the finite. What we want is some knowl- 
edge of the spiritual and the infinite, the 
underlying reality that abides.'' 

Good ; it is to convey knowledge of the 

spiritual and the infinite that . 

we are surrounded by these ^^^^^®^^® 

material phenomena. They 'CMOiign 

are symbols by which we learn pyinbols 

something about the one underlying re- 

i8i 



Ideas from JNlatiare 



ality ; object-lessons on the invisible, utter- 
ances of the inaudible, manifestations of 
him who in all ages and among all nations 
left not himself without witness.^ The 
teachings of nature do not afford a full 
revelation of God, else we should not need 
the Bible ; but they are the everywhere 
present reminders of the truth, of his being 
which the Bible endorses, which it uses as 
the elementary truths of religion. 

This is their highest use for us ; moun- 
tain and river, the stars that shine, the 
flowers that bloom, are here to speak to us 
of that one reality. You catch the charm 
of a landscape, wonder at the glory of a 
sunset, and your heart leaps with a thrill 
of joy. The doctrine of evolution by 
natural selection is powerless to explain 
that thrill of emotion. It is the soul within 
you recognizing in the unspoken language 
of nature the voice of God, saying : 

* * O heart I made, a heart beats here. ' ' 

The awe inspired by the grand in na- 
ture, the insignificance we feel in its pres- 



1 Acts 14 : 17, 
182 



plature a JVEanifestiation of Qod 

ence, are not because a mountain or an 
ocean is a greater thing than a man, for it 
is not. These feehngs rise within us be- 
cause we at once and instinctively under- 
stand that we are in the presence of a 
Power infinitely superior to ourselves. 
Sea and crag are there to teach this les- 
son, a lesson by which we begin to climb 
from a sense of our own limited capacity 
to some apprehension of the Infinite One. 

Only the rare poetic soul can unfold the 
meaning of this lesson for us, as Coleridge 
has done in his sublime '' Hymn before 
Sunrise.'' So too, the exquisite tracery of 
the snowflake, the modest beauty of the 
wayside flower, bring to him who will con- 
sider them the welcome message of divine 
care. 

We hold intercourse with our fellow- 
men, mind answering to mind, through 
material symbols, the look, the gesture, 
the spoken or written word. So nature is 
mind revealed through those two mysteri- 
ous physical agencies which we name mat- 
ter and energy. The natural is the ex- 
pression of the spiritual, as language is 

183 



Ideas from plature 



the expression of thought. It is spirit 
that is real ; but we know spirit through 
its manifestation : it is spirit that quick- 
eneth, and to this end the Word was made 
flesh. 

But instructive as the world appears to 
the thoughtful observer, it reveals a deeper 
significance under the close scrutiny of 
science. Man's knowledge of nature is, 
in its full extent, the communion of man's 
mind with the mind of the Author of na- 
ture, as our understanding of Hamlet is the 
measure of our communion with the mind 
of Shakespeare. The human soul, through 
its association with a material organism, is 
able to receive impressions from the things 
of sense, to learn both about them and 
through them. The first constitutes sci- 
ence ; the second affords the lessons of a 
wider wisdom for which the results of sci- 
entific investigation furnish the data. To 
stop with the first is to imitate the child 
who might think that he had mastered the 
great drama because he could name every 
letter in it, or, at most, the grammarian, 

caring only for parts of speech, the forms 

184 



platupe a Jflanifestation of Qod 

and combinations of words, and neglecting 
the thoughts for the expression of which 
words and their relations exist. 

So far as our knowledge of nature is 
accurate it is knowledge of Divine thought, 
that is, of reality. Order, design, care, 
and the rest, are forms of speech through 
which the Author of nature makes himself 
known to man. The material universe is 
the manifestation of the Divine mind. 
The shaping of a crystal or the formation 
of a drop of dew is a message direct from 
the mind of the Maker. 

It would correct many of our miscon- 
ceptions about the hostile relations of 
science to religion if we could save more 
time to consider these thoughts of God 
that are to us-ward in nature. The silences 
are eloquent with them. If we would de- 
clare and speak of them they are more than 
can be numbered. 

What conflict there has been, and still 
is, between theology, man's 

interpretation of the Bible, '^^^ ^^^^^ ^* 

-, . ,1 Conflict 

and science, man s explana- 
tion of nature, is largely due to one cause. 

185 



Ideas from JNfature 



We know in part ; we are ambitious to 
prophesy in full. The ill-defined annoys 
the intellect as it does the eye. We are in 
haste for a completed system of belief, ex- 
pressed in Articles of Faith numbered and 
stereotyped, and for a universal science 
centered in a single thought. We have 
neither. In Christianity we have a "kindly 
light," sufficient, if we follow it, to make 
sure our next step out of the miry slough of 
self and toward the city of God. In science 
we have a little real knowledge of first 
principles, gained in spite of many failures, 
the failures being valuable correctives of 
our own frailties, reminders of our own 
limitations, and the effort being that which 
gives to the knowledge its greatest value. 

Theology and science are both pro- 
gressive, because human and incomplete. 
Christianity, by its perfect adaptation to 
the needs of man, vindicates its claim to 
be final like nature, to be the work of the 
same author. Nature and the gospel re- 
main ; theology and science fluctuate, 
though moving forward to a nearer view 
of the unity and harmony of truth. 



i86 



JNfature a JVIanifestation of Qod 

Again and again statements of belief 
which were honestly intended to embody- 
only the eternal verities of Christianity 
are seen to have included some transient 
phase of human opinion, and have to be 
restated in the light of a clearer under- 
standing of the original records and a 
fuller appreciation of the lessons to be 
learned from the history of the faith. In 
like manner, explanations of natural phe- 
nomena once held to be sufficient have 
been gradually modified or wholly aban- 
doned. More than this, two text-books on 
the same science, published to-day, may 
contain conflicting explanations of the 
same fact. Different men have different 
views of the same thing, and so the struggle 
after truth soon becomes the battle of be- 
liefs. The theologian is often represented 
as the one most ready to draw the sword 
in defense of his creed ; if so it is wholly to 
his honor. But he must not claim all the 
credit. The goodly brotherhood of scien- 
tists have also their differences of opinion, 
and the epithets they exchange are not 
always those most appropriate to the ex- 

187 



Ideas from ]Nlatupe 



pression of brotherly love and mutual ad- 
miration. The conflict between Neo- 
Darwinian and Neo-Lamarkian may not 
exhibit all the fervid glow of that between 
Arminian and Calvinist, but then the latter 
combatants wage battle on a more mo- 
mentous issue. 

Men have contended about the definite 
combination of elements, the factors of 
evolution, and like questions, and worthily, 
for in the strife of rival views truth be- 
comes manifest. No apology is required 
for the earnestness the Christian has shown 
in defending any opinion he has thought 
to be implied in belief in God, immortal- 
ity, and inspiration. 

Man's progress toward truth has been 
mainly by the elimination of human mis- 
conceptions. His first views are almost 
always inadequate, often wholly erroneous. 
This is seen alike in the history of the for- 
mation of a natural science and of a system 
of theology. It is true that we have spent 
more centuries and made more failures over 
the lesson implied in the words '' Our Fa- 
ther," than in finding a rational explanation 

i88 



rlature a JVEanifestation of Qod 

for the occurrence of fossils in the rocks, 
because the hindrance of a defective will 
operates more strongly in the former case. 
Both instances alike illustrate man's ca- 
pacity for bungling. A record of the 
errors of the human mind at work on the 
doctrines of Christ, since those doctrines 
were fairly put before the world, makes 
lively reading ; so does a similar record of 
the efforts of man to explain natural pro- 
cesses, efforts which have none the less 
resulted in the formation of sciences of 
great value, such as astronomy, geography, 
geology, medicine. 

A skillful writer, who might think it 
worth his time, could easily compile a 
'' History of the Conflict of Medicine with 
Science," which would make a very sorry 
showing for the physician. It would only 
be necessary to record the mistakes that 
have been made concerning the structure 
of the human body and the functions of its 
organs, the cause and cure of disease, and 
hold them up as examples of the doctrines 
of medicine, and on the other hand credit 

all valuable discoveries to science — plainly 

189 



Ideas from JNlature 



its due, since science is truth. A graphic 
description of the quarrels of rival schools 
would give zest to the whole, while the 
pharmacopoeia of different ages would prove 
an inexhaustible treasury from which to 
draw absurdities sufficient to match any 
system of theology. 

But such writing would not be history ; 
it would not even be a valuable contribu- 
tion to the study of human nature. An 
impartial record of the progress of the 
human mind in the interpretation of either 
nature or the Bible would be most valuable, 
but it must be attempted by one who has full 
sympathy with man in his search for the 
light. A splendid record it is, full of fail- 
ures ; not splendid because of its failures, 
but because of the earnestness that can take 
to heart the kindly lesson of failure and try 
again. Such a one must also have caught 
some hint of the divine sympathy expressed 
in the conditions of man's lot. So precious 
is the honest desire to find the truth that, 
by supreme appointment, he only may find 
it who seeks for it as for hid treasure ; he 

who thus seeks shall find. 

190 



rlature a JVIanifestation of Qod 

Nature is the manifestation of God in 
things material ; Christianity in things 
spiritual. Even in the least 
of his works the being and ^^ PP ^ ^ 
attributes of the maker are ^^^^ ^^^^' 
shown. All truth is divine testation 
truth, harmonious and helpful, whether dis- 
covered or revealed. Science has already- 
done valuable service to religion by widen- 
ing our conception of the order of the uni- 
verse and helping to deliver us from much 
hurtful superstition. Religion is pointing 
out to science that any explanation of na- 
ture that regards only material things 
utterly fails to be final, because it cannot 
answer the most pressing questions sug- 
gested by a study of those material things. 
Religion alone reveals that unknown factor 
encountered in every phenomenon, the 
cause of natural causes, which is only ren- 
dered more necessary as mechanical expla- 
nations are extended — even God, incompre- 
hensible yet knowable, infinite yet personal. 

If there is this helpfulness and harmony 

between science and the Christian religion, 

as so many of the leaders of science in 

191 



Ideas from JNlature 



every department assure us there is, then 
this harmony tends to enforce the claims 
of that religion on our loyalty. Authori- 
ties tell us that the greatest theological 
monograph in our language is Butler's 
'' Analogy." ^ Its theme is this : The con- 
stitution and course of nature, i, ^., the 
providential treatment of man in nature, 
make known the same kind of divine gov- 
ernment as that which revealed religion 
declares ; they present the same kind of 
difficulties, so ''that he who denies the 
Scripture to have been from God upon 
account of these difficulties may, for the 
very same reason, deny the world to have 
been formed by him." The argument shows 
that Christianity is wholly reasonable. 

1 It is to be regretted that the ** Analogy" has be- 
come too difficult reading for the modern student. It 
may be true, as is often said, that its reasoning is adap- 
ted to a phase of doubt through which the world has 
passed, but it is a phase often repeated in the spiritual 
history of the individual. It is a curiously weak objec- 
tion to make that, at best, it only proves Christianity to 
be **not unreasonable." Not a few would be steadied 
to endure the stress of the storm of doubt by the set- 
tled conviction that the Christian scheme is not dis- 
credited in the high court of right reason. 

192 



plature a ]V[anifestation of Qod 

This harmony reaches farther than we 
often think. We are accustomed to speak 
of religion as resting on faith and of con- 
trasting with this the method of science, 
which is to supply knowledge or demon- 
strated truth. 

But science also demands faith of its 
followers, faith in the unseen, for instance 
those mysterious forms of energy which 
we cannot even fashion to our fancy. A 
scientific induction is, in analysis, an act of 
faith. Without this faith there would be no 
science. It is equally true on the other 
hand, that religion offers knowledge as a 
foundation for the faith which it requires. 
Christ promised that if it be the will of any 
man to do God's will he shall know of the 
doctrine. Paul, with masterly insight into 
the strength as well as the weakness of 
human nature, gave his great lesson in the 
statement of a creed, '' I know whom I 
have believed." The assurance that satis- 
fies him is that hereafter he shall know in 
its fullness what he now knows but in part. 

Those modern teachings that would find 
a shelter for religion from the windy storm 

N 193 



Ideas from J^ature 



and tempest of nineteenth century doubt 
and criticism in the fact that it satisfies the 
emotional nature, offer but a doubtful good. 
Religion does not seek a shelter ; it offers 
one, the only one. It speaks with author- 
ity and to the whole man. That it does 
satisfy the emotional nature, refine and 
sanctify the feelings is much; but there 
is more — it also addresses the intellect. 
Christian faith stands rooted in knowledge. 

The Bible furnishes the only rational 

basis for philosophy, including all being 

^ , under the two terms of a re- 

^ ^ lation, Creator and created. 
Explanation j^ defines that relation, saving 
us from much fruitless speculation, '' One 
God and Father of all, who is above all, and 
through all and in all."^ Its warrant ap- 
proves of the freest investigation of nature 
by assuring us that it is God's handiwork, 
and therefore that it will not put us to in- 

^ Eph. 4 : 6. The doctrine of the immanence of the 
Creator in his creation is not a new idea, as many seem 
to suppose. It was thus admirably stated by Paul, and, 
to prevent its being volatilized into pantheism, he fixed 
it with the other half of the whole truth — the trans- 
cendence of God. 

194 



plature a JVEanifestation of Qod 

tellectual confusion in our efforts to search 
out its meaning. 

Christ has given us the only explanation 
of human life and human duty which is 
consistent with the conditions of life and 
the nature of man : '' Strive to enter in at 
the strait gate : for many, I say unto you, 
will seek to enter in, and shall not be 
able." ^ In the sense in which this is opti- 
mistic, optimism is true ; in any other 
sense it is partial and misleading.^ 

Christianity demands the submission of 
the intellect to its authority ; but its argu- 
ments addressed to eye and ear, its analo- 
gies with the conditions and experiences of 
this earthly life, as well as its proofs af- 
forded to the spiritual perception, render 
that submission a reasonable service, as 
reasonable as is the sick man's submission 

1 Luke 13 : 24. 

'^ Christianity is optimistic in that it holds out a prom- 
ise of the final triumph of good ; but it uniformly repre- 
sents that triumph as to be shared, not, as the eager 
optimist seems sometimes to assume, by those who trust 
to the current of human tendency, but by those who 
struggle against that current through the help which the 
gospel brings. 

195 



Ideas from plature 



to the authority of the skilled physician, as 
reasonable as is the traveler's submission 
to the authority of an accredited guide. 
So we yield to authority in many things, 
not merely through habit or ed cation, but 
because we recognize in that authority a 
wisdom superior to our own. No one of 
us will claim that he has found a guide to 
fullness of life who can for a moment en- 
dure comparison with Jesus Christ. In 
admitting this we have bound ourselves by 
the most solemn obligation to yield our 
lives to his guidance. That is what the 
submission of reason to authority in mat- 
ters of religion means, to yield our own 
inadequately informed reason to the direc- 
tion of the superior reason of an unerring 
guide, an act which our own reason requires 
so far as ours is right reason. 

Christ takes possession of the very cita- 
del of the soul, directing and strengthening 
the will. He elevates the moral sense, 
transforming duty into love. If the tri- 
umphs of Christianity are more evident in 
this latter aspect, it is because reason and 

will and feeling have wrought as one in the 

196 



JNlatupal La^flf and JVIiracle 



conflict with evil. The life of classic 
Greece, in the pride of its intellectual su- 
premacy, is put to shame by the humanity 
of a Christian New England village, because 
in the latter, to the full extent to which it 
is Christian, Christ has not only won the 
affections but has also received the alle- 
giance of the understanding. 

Christianity is much more than a stirring 
or refining of the emotional nature. Faith 
like that which abounds in the eighth chap- 
ter of the Epistle to the Romans cannot 
find its necessary inspiration in myths, 
however beautiful or instructive, or even 
in the excellence of moral precepts alone. 
Christ claims the whole man, and he alone 
makes man whole. It is true that we may 
find among skeptics men of kind hearts 
and admirable lives, but we must remem- 
ber that they have grown up under the in- 
fluence of a Christian environment and a 
public opinion whose most valuable pre- 
cepts are derived from Christian teachings. 

Those who offer us rationalism as a 

guide for the intellect, retaining religion as 

a solace for the feelings, propose a divided 

197 



Ideas from plature 



allegiance, an impossible service of two 
masters. Christianity must 
be supreme ; only so can its 

pupreme triumphs continue. It rules 
out all that is false, it gives a welcome to 
all that is true, from whatever source it 
may come. " He that is not with me is 
against me," is coupled with ^^ He that is 
not against us is for us," an authoritative 
definition of Christian exclusiveness and 
Christian liberality. Error is to be exclu- 
ded, no matter how plausible ; truth is to 
be accepted, however offensive to human 
nature, humiliating to party spirit, or hos- 
tile to preconceived opinion. 

It is its completeness of adaptation that 
makes Christianity the only natural relig- 
ion, the only one fully qualified to touch 
human nature on every side, to reach its 
deepest needs and direct its loftiest aspira- 
tions, hence the only religion fitted to be 
universal. 

There may be ten great religions in the 

world, or more, or less. The Bible does 

not authorize us to belittle what is excellent 

in creeds not Christian. Its teachings are 

198 



]N[atural Law and JVEiracle 



explicit on this point. God has furnished 
for all generations in all lands witnesses to 
his rule of power and right, in the heavens 
above and in the earth beneath, and in the 
law written in the heart of man.-^ Who- 
ever has listened to these has gained pre- 
cepts of wisdom for the guidance of life. 
Whatever of truth heathen systems con- 
tained was a light glimmering in a dark 
place, to which men did well to take heed. 
In the gloom of the night the shining of 
the faintest ray is a welcome guidance, but 
now that the night is past and the Sun of 
Righteousness is risen, we do not want the 
help of torch or taper. 

We do not need to decry the teachings 
of the seers and philosophers of the hea- 
then world, neither are we called upon to 
become their disciples. All that they have 
given, and it is much, Christ also gives with 
much more. We search out their sage 
precepts in ponderous volumes ; Christ en- 
dowed his words with life, with eternal 
youth and freshness, and sent them forth 
to mingle among men, to be companions 



1 Rom. 2 : 14, 15. 

199 



Ideas from JNlature 



and friends, to meet us in the streets and 
talk with us in the home. The good Sa- 
maritan is a man we know, and the return 
of the prodigal happened in our native vil- 
lage. 

Often it seems that the most astounding 
of miracles is this : The words of Jesus, 
all we have of them, make together not 
more than a thin pamphlet, not much longer 
than an old-fashioned sermon, yet they con- 
tain, as Ewald said to Stanley, all the wis- 
dom of the world. Who shall estimate 
their power in the world ? a power greater 
to-day than it ever was before ! The world 
has not outgrown them, it has not yet 
grown up to them ; if in any period it has 
neglected them, that has been a period of 
decline, not advance. 

We may learn many profitable lessons 
by the comparative study of religions, if 
we inquire wisely, but none more valuable 
than this, the matchless superiority of 
Christ over all other masters. 

The religion which holds the promise of 

the future is that which expresses the 

gospel of Christ in its completeness and 

200 



plature a ]\Iaiiifestation of Qod 

simplicity, and equally reflects that full 
sympathy with nature which is a marked 
characteristic of the Bible, recognizing that 
the teachings of nature form a part of 
God's message to man. It is not claimed 
that the pulpit should herald each fresh 
discovery of science, or approve each new 
hypothesis ; it has better work to do. But 
it must not condemn any doctrine of sci- 
ence as contrary to the Bible unless it 
has evidence sufficient to sustain that ver- 
dict. 

Theology should have science as its ally ; 
it may do so by frankly acknowledging 
what is true in science. The alliance 
makes no call for compromise. 

The essential unity and inner harmony 
of all truth from every source have been 
recognized by the noblest souls in past 
generations, and are especially enforced in 
our own age by the rapid progress of in- 
vestigation which is bringing the bounda- 
ries of the various realms of thought nearer 
together. Sooner or later all these artifi- 
cial boundaries will disappear. 

The Christian must not hesitate to ac- 

20I 



Ideas from plature 



cept, in the fuller meaning it has to-day, 
the sublime utterance of the psalmist, 

The heavens declare the glory of God. 

The student in the laboratory may find 
fresh inspiration for his work in the tri- 
umphant cry of the devout astronomer, 
half dazed with the splendor of the laws he 
had discovered, 

O God, I think thy thoughts after thee. 






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